


Make This Old House Home

by consultingclassicist



Series: Make This Old House Home [1]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Developing Relationship, Family, Family Feels, Home Renovation, M/M, Minor Character Death, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-21
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-09-24 01:36:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,691
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17091635
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/consultingclassicist/pseuds/consultingclassicist
Summary: “Ben had tried to get Sam to talk more about how she felt about getting to know her biological father, NHL superstar and erstwhile asshole, Kent Parson. But ever a teenager, Sam was not forthcoming to her dad.“‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘He’ll buy me lunch, try to wheedle his way into my good graces, and we’ll probably never hear from him again.’ Her tone brooked no further discussion. Ben admitted to himself that she was probably right.”**Ben Wright assumes the worst when Kent Parson shows up at his door a week after his wife’s funeral. Instead of custody, all Kent wants is a chance--a chance to know his daughter, a chance to lead a normal life, a chance to make a home of his own. Navigating grief and other major life changes, Ben, Kent, and Sam discover that both families and homes are what you make of them.





	Make This Old House Home

**Author's Note:**

> Once again, I wouldn’t be here sharing this story with you without H. She’s a steadfast cheerleader, font of gentle criticism, and, most importantly, one of the greatest people I know. This was supposed to be a tidy little 5k fic, and she stuck with me when it outgrew even my wildest expectations. She also chopped ruthlessly at long sentences and longer paragraphs. Besides all that, she pretty much wrote the summary. Thanks, friend; as always, I owe ya one.
> 
> Grief is an incredibly personal thing. I have only my own experiences and what I have read to go on, and my own experience includes losing neither a life partner nor my mother. If you have recently lost a loved one, please take care of yourself if you choose to read this fic.
> 
> Also, I’m no expert on buying or renovating houses. Please suspend some of your disbelief, though please also know that some of the things I described are based on actual houses.
> 
> CW: Offscreen death from cancer of an OC (Ben’s wife/Sam’s mother), very brief mention of past illegal drug use

A week after they buried Marian, Kent Parson appeared on the doorstep. Ben would always remember that: almost to the hour, it was so precise. In a week where the hours had blurred together in a fog of grief, Parson’s arrival stood out in sharp relief. 

Ben had naively hoped that he and Sam could prepare themselves for the time when Marian was finally gone. She’d been sick for so long, and they’d known it was coming. But he’d also known, deep down, that it was a foolish hope. He was doing his best to keep it together for Sam, because he’d promised Marian that he was going to take care of her. So, he was making sure she had three meals a day and put on clean clothes for her first day back at school since the funeral even as he wore the same shirt three days in a row and picked at his food listlessly.

“Hey,” Parson said, when Ben opened the door, trying to disguise the fact that he’d just been crying while washing dishes from the past three days. “Are you Ben Wright?”

“I am,” Ben said warily. He’d heard more than one story from Marian about the hard-partying NHL player she’d dated for an ill-advised year, the father of her daughter. At twenty-one, Parson had clearly been thoughtless, careless, and self-absorbed. Ben was pretty sure he was justified in assuming that Parson was there to claim custody of Sam—in assuming the worst, basically. Wouldn’t it just be the icing on the shit cake that, now that her mother was gone, Parson wanted his daughter back?

Parson smiled, tight, gone almost before it registered. “That’s me. Look, I was so sorry to hear about Marian. There was no way for me to make it for the funeral, but I—I’m sorry.”

Ben was now more confused than ever, which was not helped by just how tired he was of hearing how sorry people were. Their sorrow did nothing to change the fact that Marian was gone. “Thank you,” he forced himself to say, pushing his confusion to the back of his mind. He didn’t add, _but why are you here, asshole?_

“You’re probably wondering why I’m here,” Parson said. If he noticed Ben’s discomfort or the red rims of his eyes, he didn’t say anything, just plowed straight ahead.

_No shit, Sherlock,_ Ben thought.

Parson crossed and uncrossed his arms, like he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. For the first time, Ben wondered what was going through Parson’s mind, showing up on a stranger’s doorstep like this. “Look, I don’t know what Marian told you about me. I don’t blame her if it was pretty terrible. I probably deserve that. And I guess I should be clear that I don’t want to take Samantha away from you. But… I want to see her sometimes. If that would be okay.” Parson’s shoulders, which had risen toward his ears with tension as he spoke, relaxed abruptly, as though he’d forced them to.

Ben gave up on trying to have this whole conversation on his doorstep. “Why don’t you come in?” he asked, opening the door a bit wider and gesturing inside. He watched Parson as he passed by, taking in his backwards snapback, his Aces t-shirt, his expensive Adidas shoes. Tennis shoes, Ben would have called them when he was growing up, but these clearly had never seen a tennis court or a running track or anything more strenuous than a short city walk. He resisted the urge to shake his head as he shut the door. “The living room is just up there to the right.”

Kent Parson was in his _home._ The captain of the Las Vegas Aces was in the modest four-square house he and Marian had bought just over a year after they started dating. Maybe it had been soon, maybe they’d rushed into it, but it’d felt right. And they’d made it a home—their home, Sam’s home. 

It had needed work, and some projects had gone more smoothly than others. The weekend project of painting the kitchen a sunny yellow had turned into a month-long odyssey. The possibly foolhardy decision to build some cabinets in the mudroom himself had resulted in Marian swearing she was going to divorce him (they weren’t yet married; their wedding day was still six months in the future). 

But now the house was littered with the detritus of a life well lived. Shoes in the entranceway, ancient family photos stuck to the fridge with magnets from long-ago holidays, Marian’s many cookbooks still dogeared on the countertop next to the toaster. Marian filled every square inch of the house, her touch present in every room. Sometimes, Ben found his breath snatched away when he caught sight of something that reminded him of a different moment of his life with Marian. Now, he felt like Parson was taking up all the remaining molecules of air.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Ben asked, to be polite.

Parson perched on the edge of the sofa. “Water would be good, thanks. Ice, if you have it.”

“Sure do,” Ben replied. He was glad to have a concrete task. Filling glasses and dropping in three ice cubes apiece was something he could do while he tried to put off whatever was coming. Ben knew that Marian had emailed Parson once a year with a quick update on their daughter. But Ben had been the one there for the major milestones: Sam’s first day of preschool, first day of kindergarten, first day of first grade. Soccer teams and ballet lessons, a brief infatuation with horses, and her refusal to eat green vegetables. Sam was now a gangly teenager—when had that happened?—and Ben was her sole guardian. They weren’t related by blood, but Sam was his kid.

Finally, he could delay the inevitable no longer. “Water,” he said, handing a glass to Parson and sitting down heavily on the beaten-up wingback opposite the corner of the sofa where Parson continued to perch uncomfortably. “You were saying?”

“Yeah,” Parson said, taking a long gulp from his glass. “I want to see Samantha sometimes. A weekend here or there, or a trip to the zoo, or something.”

Meanness and grief overtook Ben. “She goes by Sam,” he bit out. “And she won’t go to the zoo with you. She’s fifteen. Do you know anything at all about her?”

Parson seemed to shrink in on himself. “No.”

“Then what are you _doing_ here? Why _now?”_ Ben hated how his sorrow played with his emotions, but was grateful for the anger now.

Parson ran a finger around the lip of his glass. “I want to get to know her. I missed the chance to be her father, and I know that. But I want to get to know her, if she’ll let me.” He took a sip of water. “Marian sent me her school picture every year. You did good, Ben. I’m not taking her away. Marian’s gone, and I don’t want to take away her stability any more than it already has been.”

Ben thought Parson had looked small before; he had underestimated how little space a hockey player could take up. Maybe Parson really was serious.

“Okay.” Ben tried to gather his thoughts, scattered as they were. “I have to ask Sam. Marian would’ve—” He stopped. Pressed his hand to his mouth, tried for the thousandth time not to cry. “Sam is her own person. She makes her own decisions. If she wants to see you, I won’t stand in her way.” He hoped Parson hadn’t noticed the pause. _Marian would’ve insisted that Sam choose for herself._ As though Marian was still there to insist on anything.

Parson looked suddenly hopeful. He sat up a little straighter and rubbed his hands over his broad thighs. 

Ben hated to let him down, but he had to. “She isn’t here right now. She’s at school,” he said. It was a Thursday, after all. Structure and normalcy were important, and so she was back in class. But he decided to hold out an olive branch. “She’ll be home in an hour. You can stay until then, if you want. I have to go call a client, but… make yourself at home, I guess?” He felt like he was sleepwalking. How on earth was a man supposed to handle the unexpected return of his wife’s ex, the absentee biological father of their daughter, so soon after his wife went into the ground?

“You sure?” The change that came over Parson’s face was dramatic, so Ben knew he’d been right to ask.

“Yeah. I’ll text her and let her know what’s going on, so she’s not caught off guard. Just… it’s been hard for her, losing her mom. Don’t take it personally if she isn’t at her best.” Ben stood up and ran a hand through his hair for something to do. “I’ll just be at the kitchen table if you need anything.”

The truth was that it had been hard for both of them, not just Sam. But Ben knew that as soon as he admitted aloud how hard the past week had been, he’d fragment into tiny shards, like a glass swept off a counter to shatter on tile. Hell, the past year had been so hard—chemo had taken more and more out of Marian and then she’d finally made the wrenching, awful decision to stop treatment and accept what neither of them wanted to accept. She was the emotionally stronger of the two of them, and always had been. Ben knew that, but sometimes wondered why he was the one left behind.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

A little over an hour later, Sam came into the house, letting the front door bang shut behind her in a way that made Ben grit his teeth. She dropped her bookbag on the staircase with a thunk, and there was already a thunderstorm on her face when she came into the living room.

Parson straightened up on the sofa and held out his hand for Sam to shake. She ignored it, instead flopping down in one of the armchairs and crossing her arms. Parson retracted his hand uncomfortably. “I’m Kent Parson,” he tried. Sam’s expression remained hostile and she said nothing. “Your father. I know I wasn’t around at all for you, growing up, or your mom. And I’m so sorry about your loss.” He paused, twisting his snapback in his hands. “But I wanted to ask if maybe you thought we could get to know each other.”

Parson’s speech had started off smooth, but by the end of it, Ben could read the nerves clearly on his face. As Sam continued to stare blankly, Parson rushed to fill the silence. “I mean, not this second. But generally? I can’t make up for lost time, I know, but…”

Ben wouldn’t admit to enjoying watching Parson squirm, but it was a close call. His NHL media training clearly wasn’t serving him well now.

“Can I take you to lunch some weekend?” Parson asked. Ben was really worried about the fate of his snapback at this rate. The brim might not recover from all the bending. “Ben—your dad is okay with whatever you decide.”

Ben felt an unexpected warmth at Parson’s words. But Sam’s expression remained icy.

“I guess,” she said finally. “I gotta go do homework now.” And with that, she turned on her heel and left. Ten seconds later, Ben heard her door slam shut upstairs.

“Like I said,” Ben offered awkwardly, “it’s been a tough time for Sam. Us.”

Parson sighed. “I guess I should be happy I got that much, huh?”

Ben nodded. “Probably.” He paused, but was still feeling charitable after Parson’s acknowledgement that Ben was Sam’s dad. “Look, I’ll talk to her. What’s your schedule? Are you still playing? I’m strictly a baseball guy so I honestly have no idea.”

“Ah. I haven’t announced it yet, but I’m going to retire next month, once the playoffs are over. The body doesn’t bounce back like it used to.” He shrugged. Here was the Kent Parson the media probably saw. Ben couldn’t figure out how Parson felt, though he couldn’t help but suspect that there was more to the story than Parson had offered him. He didn’t press the issue, though. 

“I’ll have more time on my hands now,” Parson continued a moment later. “And I’d be lying if I said that didn’t play a role in my showing up today. I’d been thinking about it anyway, and then I heard about Marian… I knew she was sick, but I guess not how sick.”

Ben absolutely did not want to discuss this with Parson or anyone. It was hardly the mature response, but he remained silent, hoping that Parson would fill the void. 

He didn’t disappoint. “Anyway. I should get going. Let me give you my number, and you can text me so we can set it up.” He took the phone Ben handed over and tapped out his contact information. “Thank you.” He held out his hand, and Ben shook it and walked him to the door.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Two Saturdays later, Parson pulled up in his BMW. Ben had tried to get Sam to talk more about how she felt about getting to know her biological father, NHL superstar and erstwhile asshole, Kent Parson. But ever a teenager, Sam was not forthcoming to her dad. 

“It’s fine,” she said. “He’ll buy me lunch, try to wheedle his way into my good graces, and we’ll probably never hear from him again.” Her tone brooked no further discussion. Ben admitted to himself that she was probably right.

But to his surprise, when Parson and Sam pulled back up to the house nearly two hours later, Sam got out and waved goodbye. “Kent’s gonna text you, but we were thinking he could pick me up at the same time in two weeks. He’s… not bad,” she said as she strode past Ben into the house. 

Ben stood there like an idiot, belatedly lifting his hand in a half-wave to Parson as he backed out of the drive. From Sam, that was a ringing endorsement. _Huh._

\\\//\\\//\\\//

It quickly became a ritual. Parson picked Sam up one or two Saturdays a month, and they spent a couple of hours together. He seemed genuinely committed to the project of finally getting to know his daughter, and she was obviously warming up to him. Ben knew it probably helped that Parson took her fun places—including, to his chagrin, the zoo—and spent money on her, distracting her a little bit from the gaping hole in her life. He’d be lying if he didn’t admit that he wasn't at least a little bit appreciative of that. She needed something that didn’t remind her of her mom, and Ben wasn’t exactly doing anything to eradicate Marian from the house. He hadn’t even bothered to donate her clothes yet. He couldn’t. They still smelled, ever so slightly, like her.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Almost a year into the tradition, Parson pulled up earlier than usual and Sam wasn’t yet ready. Ben wasn’t even sure if she was out of her pajamas yet. “Sam!” Ben yelled up the stairs. “Parson is here!”

“What?” she yelled back from her room.

“Kent Parson!” Ben bellowed as he climbed the steps. He tapped on Sam’s door, leaning against the frame. “Are you out of bed and dressed yet?”

She pulled open the door, startling Ben upright. “What? No! He’s coming next week!” Her hair was a rats’ nest, and Ben valued his life too much to tell her that the corners of her eyes still had sleep crusted on them. She’d started wearing the red plaid PJ bottoms Marian had given her last Christmas almost every night, and last night had been no exception.

“You sure?” Ben asked, taking a gulp of his coffee.

Sam’s eye roll was probably visible from outer space. Ben sighed. “Well, get up and get dressed. Day’s halfway over.”

Another eye roll. _Teenagers, honestly._ “Sure, thanks, Dad. I’ll be down soon.”

Gathering some towels from the bathroom with the hand not clutching his coffee, Ben headed back downstairs. Parson must have gotten the dates mixed up. Ben dropped the towels off in the mudroom and made his way to the front door. It was the morning for door-related surprises, though, it seemed: as he reached for the lock, there was a knock. He flipped the lock and pulled the door open. On the other side, Parson was dressed casually in jeans and a fleece pullover. His hand was still raised from knocking.

“Parson! Sam says she wasn’t expecting you today,” Ben said. _Dammit,_ he was really trying to work on not sounding like an asshole. Sam seemed to enjoy spending time with Parson, and he was her father. And Ben was pretty sure by now that Parson really didn’t want to steal his daughter away.

Parson’s hand was raised as though he’d been about to knock again. “Hi,” he said. “Were you waiting on the other side of the door?”

Ben laughed. “Not quite. I was going to come out and let you know that Sam isn’t even out of bed yet—please don’t tell her I told you that, or my life won’t be worth much. But then you knocked.”

Parson had shifted his outstretched hand to rub at the back of his neck. He seemed unaware of these nervous tells. “Yeah. I guess I should’ve texted first or something, but do you want to get coffee? I was talking with Swoops and realized that we’ve never had a conversation except that first day. But you already have coffee. Maybe another time?” The words all tumbled out in a rush.

“Uh—” Ben was taken aback. He wished Parson _had_ texted him, to give him time to prepare. And who the hell was _Swoops?_ “Yeah, I guess I could use another cup of coffee. This is the last of the pot, anyway. Just let me—five minutes?” 

Resisting the urge to close the door in Parson’s face, Ben took a deep breath and started to dig through the pile of jackets and shoes hanging in the entryway. What did Parson want? What was he trying to get at? Wasn’t it enough to take Sam to lunch a few times a month? She was the only thing they had in common, after all. Ben hadn’t played sports since middle school and didn’t know the first thing about hockey. He was a freelance editor, for fuck’s sake. He made enough for himself and Sam to live comfortably, but he couldn’t dream of the kind of money that Kent Parson had made in the NHL. What on earth were they going to talk about? 

Finally, Ben managed to dig out his beat-up high-tops and a lightweight jacket from the mess. After pulling them on, he grabbed his phone, wallet, and keys. “Ready?”

“Do you want to drive?” Parson asked.

Ben looked in the direction of his ancient blue Subaru, with the patches of rust around the wheel wells and the dented-in tailgate where some asshole had rear-ended him, and laughed. “Ah, no. I’ll let you drive. I can take the Subaru any day of the week. It’s not often I get the chance to ride in an i8.”

Parson’s mouth turned up at the corners, like he was trying not to laugh. “Yeah, okay. Hop in.”

The ride was largely silent, just Ben offering directions – “left at this stoplight,” “the next right” – to his favorite coffee shop, Daily Grind. There was a parking spot just in front of the door, and Parson effortlessly parallel-parked. 

“Coffee’s on me,” Ben offered as he climbed out of the low-slung car. “It’s the least I can do to thank you for being so kind to Sam. She isn’t talking to me all that much right now” – and the million-dollar question was whether that was grief or normal teenage behavior – “but it has been good for her to get out and about.”

Parson looked as though he wanted to argue, but to Ben’s satisfaction, he did not. He did hold the coffee shop door open and usher Ben through, though. They ordered and sat down at one of the tiny marble-topped tables. 

Suddenly, Ben was hit by a memory of one of his and Marian’s early dates. They’d sat at a table just like this one, and their knees had knocked underneath it. They’d smiled shyly over the table and let their knees keep bumping. She’d insisted he try her fancy latte; he’d insisted he wouldn’t like it; she persisted. They’d split a slice of gingerbread and then a second. 

They hadn’t known each other long, but their conversation had spooled out in the easy way of old friends. Even though it had been the middle of the afternoon on a chilly November Saturday, Ben had pulled her up the stairs to his apartment, laughing as they’d raced eagerly for his door. She’d batted his hands away as she texted her babysitter to let her know she’d be later than planned. It had felt a little illicit, but Ben was pretty sure that was the day he’d decided that she was the woman for him.

The barista called Ben’s name and Parson went up to collect their drinks. “Penny for your thoughts?” Parson asked as he set their coffees down. Plain black for Ben, a fancy latte for himself.

Ben snapped back to the present. “I was thinking about Marian,” he said, hoping the melancholy he felt wasn’t audible in his voice. “Our third date was here.”

Parson nodded. “You miss her.” It wasn’t a question.

“So much. I’m holding it together for Sam, but…” Ben trailed off, not sure what else there was to say.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” Parson asked. “I don’t mind. I’ll buy new coffee.”

Ben considered for a moment before replying. “No. It was a good memory. Drink your coffee.”

Silence fell. Ben wasn’t sure what to say. Between the surprise of Parson asking him to get coffee and the sharp sweetness of the memory, he was glad to take a moment to sip his coffee and gather his thoughts.

Parson broke the quiet a moment later. “I’m thinking about moving back here full-time once I retire.”

Well. That wasn’t what Ben had expected when he’d opened the door this morning. “Not staying in Vegas?” he asked, not sure how much Parson wanted to share.

“No.” Parson paused. “I’m going out on my own terms, but there’s nothing in Vegas for me once I’m retired. And my folks are still up here, and my sister and her family, and now Sam.” He fiddled with an empty sweetener packet as he talked. “I was serious about wanting to get to know her, Ben. Kit and I can get used to the quiet life, anyway. Our wild days are in the past.”

“Fair.” Ben glanced out the window. “Kit… your girlfriend?”

Parson laughed as though it had been startled out of him. “Kit’s my cat. Here, you wanna see photos of her? I’ve had her since she was a kitten. She’s almost nineteen now, sleeps a lot, but she’s still my princess.” He pulled out his phone before Ben could even reply. “Here she is.” A long-haired cat slept curled up in a pink cat bed in a patch of sun. Her chin rested on her paws, and her white whiskers curled in different directions, in the endearing way of old cats.

Ben was surprised. “She’s older than Sam.” It didn’t sit well with him that Parson had managed to take care of a kitten, but not a young family.

“Yeah. I think I was drunk when I adopted her, after my rookie season. We didn’t even make it to the playoffs. I was miserable and lonely and somehow a cat seemed like a good idea. She and I have been through a lot together.”

Ben sipped at his coffee again for something to do with his hands. “So, do you know where you’ll stay when you move back, then?”

Parson looked grateful for the change of subject. “I bought a house up here when the Aces first renewed my contract. It’s really awful, though, so I’m gonna sell it and look for something else.”

Ben couldn’t help but laugh. “Awful how?”

“What kind of house would you’ve bought when you were 21 if you were suddenly making almost ten million dollars a year?” Parson asked. “That’s why it’s awful. It’s too big for just me and Kit, everything’s too gaudy, no one really needs two kitchens and a movie theater.”

Parson fiddled with the spoon in the sugar bowl at the center of the table. “I think I’m going to look for something more like your and Sam’s house, actually. It’s… cozy.”

Ben smiled. “Marian and I bought it when we were 24. We did most of the work ourselves. It needed a lot--we never could have afforded it otherwise. I guess it’s that paycheck that makes a difference in what you buy.” His tone was teasing. Parson was right: his home _was_ cozy. He wouldn’t trade that for Parson’s wealth or his nightmare of a house.

“Yeah, well. Money doesn’t buy taste, and I hadn’t figured that out at 21.”

Ben drained his coffee mug. “Sam will be glad you’re moving back. Have you told her yet?”

“I’ll tell her next week,” Parson replied. “I was just finalizing a few things and didn’t want to get her hopes up, you know?”

“Sure. I won’t spoil the surprise.” Ben glanced at his watch. “Shit, I should probably go home—I’m supposed to Skype a client in an hour.” Somehow, an hour had passed without him noticing.

Parson gathered their mugs and carried them to the counter as Ben pulled on his jacket. They walked back outside and climbed into Parson’s car. The ride back was nearly as silent as the ride there, but Ben didn’t mind. They had covered a lot of fraught ground under the guise of a cup of coffee, but it had somehow never felt forced or unbearably painful. _Huh._

“Thanks for indulging me with coffee,” Parson said as they pulled up outside Ben’s home.

“It was nice,” Ben replied, not surprised to find that he meant that genuinely. “Thanks, Parson. Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Call me Kent,” Kent said. “See you next week.” With that, he drove off, leaving Ben gazing at his taillights.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

“So, Kent’s moving back,” Sam announced as she came into the kitchen the following Saturday, shedding her jacket and bag and shoes and grabbing a snack.

Ben looked up from his laptop and pulled off his reading glasses to look at his daughter. “Yeah? What do you think?”

“It’ll be cool. He’s cool.” She shoved another hummus-dipped pita chip into her mouth.

Ben closed the laptop and studied Sam. “Are you doing okay? With—Kent, and your mom? I wish she was here for you to talk to. I only met Kent when you did, after all.”

Sam took a shaky breath. “It’s okay. I wish she was here too” – she paused to wipe at her eyes with her sleeve – “but… I dunno, Kent’s been telling me about them before Mom found out she was pregnant with me, and… it’s nice. To know those things about her.” 

Ben attempted a smile but his own eyes were watering now, too. “I’m glad you have that, kiddo, and I’m glad he’s coming back, too. You know I miss your mom, all the time.” He was definitely crying now, and reached for the box of tissues in the middle of the kitchen counter. “We’ve got each other. And I guess now we have Kent Parson, too,” he added, getting up to fold Sam into his arms. No one prepared you for being the only person available to answer all the questions your kid was bound to ask eventually, and knowing that Kent was helping to shoulder some of that burden, even unknowingly, made Ben feel warm. He rubbed his daughter’s shoulder, pulling back a little bit to see whether she was still crying.

Sam pulled away from the hug too and chuckled a little damply. “Yeah, I guess we do. Thanks, Dad. I’m going upstairs now.” She snatched up the bowl of pita chips and made her retreat. 

Ben was pretty sure that, at 2:30pm on a Saturday, that was code for “texting with Anna Christoffers about boys,” but he wasn’t going to stand in her way. “Don’t forget, chicken casserole tonight! I need my best sous chef!” He perched his reading glasses back on his nose and got back to work. Kent Parson was the last thing on his mind.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Until Tuesday. Ben’s phone lit up with a text, then another and another.

_its official, i’m retired._

_can i bring over chinese food tmrw nite?_

_its ok if u and Sam have plans, i dont have to_

Ben sighed. Texts like these, with haphazard spelling and capitalization and punctuation, made his editorial self’s skin crawl. Just because pro athletes didn’t have college degrees didn’t mean…ugh, whatever. It wasn’t his job to edit Kent’s texts. _Let it go, Wright._ He opened a new tab on his browser and googled _Kent Parson NHL retirement._ He clicked on the first YouTube video that showed up.

Kent was standing in front of a Las Vegas Aces backdrop, at a podium. He was flanked by a severe-looking woman holding a clipboard and a slightly more shambolic older man. He adjusted the microphone and began reading from a piece of paper on the podium. “Thank you all for coming today. I’m here to announce my retirement from the Las Vegas Aces.”

He paused. Ben wondered if that was choreographed. “I have been so lucky to play my entire career here. Las Vegas fans are the best in the country, and I want to thank them from the bottom of my heart for their support over the last nineteen years. I’d also like to thank the Aces management for continuing to believe in me year after year, and especially head coach Marcus Tindall and GM Evan Blanchard. Of course, my deepest thanks are to my teammates, past and present. Playing with these players has meant the world to me and has made me a better player, captain, and person, and I will miss them all. Thank you.”

The reporters, who must have been standing behind the camera recording the video, shouted out their questions simultaneously, and Ben could only catch snatches through the cacophony: “–next?” “Why–?” “Now?” “–Parson–” The severe-looking woman stepped smoothly into Kent’s place at the podium and the crowd quickly quieted. “Kent Parson will not be taking questions at this time. We’ll release an official statement later today. Thank you all for coming.” The video came to an end.

Ben turned back to his phone. Video-Kent had been composed in his three-piece gray suit, which Ben was sure cost more than every item of clothing he owned combined. But text-Kent sounded less sure. Ben wondered why he wasn’t going to eat Chinese food with some of his teammates instead, but it wasn’t like he and Sam had anything more exciting going on. He texted back:

_Yeah, sure. Come over at 7? Sam likes beef and broccoli. Extra egg rolls?_

Kent’s reply was almost immediate.

_perf see you then_

\\\//\\\//\\\//

At 6:58pm, there was a knock on the door. “Sam! Dinner’s here!” Ben shouted up the stairs as he dried his hands on a kitchen towel.

“Coming!” came the response, quickly followed by scuffing sounds from overhead that suggested that she actually _was_ coming. _Wouldn’t that be a miracle,_ Ben thought. Sometimes, in typical teenager fashion, she’d ignore him until he called her two or three more times.

Tossing the towel on the counter, Ben went to the door and pulled it open. “Hi, Kent. C’mon in,” he said, stretching out a hand to take one of the bags of Chinese food that Kent was holding. “Food smells good.”

Kent let him take the bag of food. “I probably got too much, sorry. Thanks for letting me come by.”

“It’s no problem. Not like we had anything else going on, and Sam loves Chinese food. How’s the newly retired life?” There was something odd in the air, some kind of tension that Ben couldn’t quite figure out. Was it that the three of them had never spent any time together? That Kent had basically invited himself over, even though Ben had agreed easily enough? He forced himself to ignore it and headed into the kitchen, trusting that Kent would follow him.

“Yeah, it’s… been kind of a lot, honestly. But Kit and I landed this morning and now I’m here with dinner.”

Ben hummed as he shuffled around the kitchen, pulling out plates and utensils. The counter probably needed replacing, he thought idly. He and Marian had replaced the shitty 1970s Formica early on, and the replacement Formica bore the scars of a long life. Besides, since they’d painted the kitchen, the counter’s color no longer looked as nice.

He was glad he’d remained silent as he puttered. Kent had more to say. “It’s nothing I wasn’t expecting. My whole career has been media fodder, so of course the end of it was going to be, too.” Kent fiddled with the edge of one of the paper carry-out bags as he spoke. “I’ve been dealing with them for over twenty years. I guess I just didn’t realize how strange it was going to be to have to say that I was retiring.”

“Things coming to an end is always hard. We’re glad you’re here for dinner, anyway.” Ben finished pulling the take-out containers out of the bags and handed a plate to Kent. “Help yourself. We’ll eat at the table, let me just go see where Sam is.” He rolled his eyes; _teenagers._ He’d thought she was coming right down. The joke was on him, as usual.

Just as he was heading toward the door, Sam burst into the kitchen. “Hi, Kent!”

“Hey, Sam. I got your beef and broccoli,” Kent said with a smile.

“Did you get Dad’s extra egg rolls?” She grabbed a plate and started heaping it with food.

Kent was gathering up some chopsticks and a fork. “Sure did. How was school?”

“Beer, Kent?” Ben interrupted. “I was going to have one.”

“Sure,” Kent replied, sitting down across from Sam at the kitchen table. “Thanks.”

Sam jumped right back in. “Fine. Mrs. Anderson really liked my essay about the Berlin Wall. Maybe I’ll study history in college. Which is probably a good idea because I think I _bombed_ the chemistry test.” She shoved a forkful of shrimp lo mein into her mouth. Kent hadn’t skimped on the spread.

“Well, there’s still some time yet,” Ben reminded her. “And I hope you did not bomb that chemistry test.”

“Daaaaad,” she said, mouth full.

Kent smiled. “I won’t tell you how many chemistry tests I bombed in high school.”

Ben sighed. “Yes, and you had a career as a professional hockey player to look forward to. _Sam,_ on the other hand, wants to get into a good college. Right, Sam?” It was a well-worn discussion, but Ben and Marian had been saving since their wedding day to help Sam pay for a college education.

“Right, Dad.” Sam reached across the table for the beef and broccoli. “Tell me more about you in high school, Kent!”

A glimmer of something dark swept across Kent’s face and was gone before Ben could pinpoint whether it was sadness or anger or something else. “Well, I was living in Rimouski, playing for the Océanic. That’s how major junior hockey works.” Ben was suddenly, sharply glad that Sam was only involved in easy extracurriculars like Model United Nations and the French conversation club. “We traveled a lot. My billet family, the family I lived with, were really nice, but it could be hard. And I honestly wasn’t a dedicated student. Your dad’s right, I knew I was going to the NHL. You need to pass those chemistry tests.” Kent paused for a bite of his fried rice.

Ben had so many questions and knew it wasn’t the right time to ask any of them, not in front of Sam. He half-listened to their ongoing conversation about what it was like to play major junior hockey and Sam’s plans to take three AP classes next year as he mused about how strange it was that Kent was here eating Chinese food in his house the day after announcing his retirement from hockey.

“So we taped a picture of Nicolas Cage to the toilet lid,” Kent was saying as Sam laughed uproariously. “And when the assistant coach went to take a—to pee, I swear he jumped six feet in the air!”

“Oh my God,” Sam said. “That’s hilarious. Anna will love it. Can I be excused?” she asked. She was already pulling her phone out of her pocket despite Ben’s prohibition about phones at the table. “I can’t wait to tell her.”

“Sure, just clear your plate. And get your homework done!” Ben replied. Sam was halfway to the sink before he finished speaking.

After she’d disappeared upstairs, Ben turned to Kent. “Another beer? Or do you need to go? Sorry she didn’t stick around. That was at least fifteen minutes longer than I usually get from her.”

Kent chuckled. “Teenagers. I get it. I played with eighteen-year-olds every year of my career, after all. And sure.” Ben started to get up. Kent waved at him to stay seated. “Stay here. I see where your fridge is, let me get them.”

“So you and Kit are staying in your house?” Ben couldn’t resist asking at least one of his many questions any longer.

“Yeah, at least for a while. But I might start hating the clashing granite in the bathroom too much to handle it.” Kent sent the open bottle in front of Ben and sat down again. “I just didn’t want to eat dinner there alone tonight.”

Ah. Now they were getting somewhere. “Fair enough. So you just left poor Kit alone, then?” Ben kept his tone as light as he could.

Kent laughed. “Yeah, you got me there. She’s probably fast asleep in the middle of the bed, though, knowing her.”

“No fancy retirement dinners for the captain?” This was another one of the questions he’d been turning over in his mind during dinner.

Kent’s mouth twisted into an odd half-smile. “Nah, the team’s known for a while. We had a big barbeque at the end of the season that kind of doubled as a retirement party for the team, and then the owner and GM took me out to dinner last night.” He drained his beer. “I was just ready to be out of there, I guess, once I made the announcement. Rip off the bandaid, you know?”

Ben hummed quietly. “Listen. I don’t know anything about hockey, or about retiring at the ripe old age of thirty-seven, but if you want to talk to someone about what’s next or whatever, let me know.” He wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to say, but he wasn’t really sure what was.

“Thanks.” Kent fiddled with the label of his beer, peeling it away from the glass. “The Aces wanted me to stay. They offered me a sweet job in the front office, but I…” He paused, seemed to gather his thoughts, and pressed on. “I had a good run there, a great run, and it’s rare to play your whole career in the same place. Even the captains aren’t safe if the top brass decide the team needs a change. I’m just not cut out for making those kinds of brutal decisions, especially not when guys I played with are still on the team. And I’ve learned the hard way that it’s not good for me to cling on to things that are over.”

“Good for you,” Ben said quietly.

“Yeah, well. Lots of therapy.” Kent’s smile was wry. “I’ve grown up a little bit in the last few years. Self-awareness and all that.”

Ben smiled back. “And now you have the luxury of time to figure out what’s next. Maybe you’ll find a house first.”

Kent chuckled. “Yeah, my realtor’s sending over some listings tomorrow. She keeps going on about ‘Queen Annes,’ whatever the hell that means.”

“Oh no,” Ben laughed. “Be careful. You’ll end up with something just as over-embellished as your place now but with all the problems of a hundred-and-fifty-year-old house to boot.”

Kent groaned. Ben grinned and pulled up a photo on his phone before holding it out to Kent. Glancing at the photo, Kent thunked his head down on the table and groaned again.

“Hey! I yell at Sam for putting her elbows on the table.”

“You brought this on yourself,” Kent said, head still firmly on the placemat. “Stop laughing at me. That house is _terrible._ Its gingerbread has gingerbread. I’m texting my realtor right now.”

“You’ll find something. But yeah, maybe tell her not too much gingerbread.” Still laughing, Ben put his phone back in his pocket. “Another beer?”

“One more,” Kent replied, fighting back his own grin. “Then I should get back to Kit.”

//\\\//\\\//\\\

The next day, Ben’s phone pinged with a series of texted links to real estate listings. He was, as always this early on a Thursday morning, working in the upstairs study, a full mug of tea at his elbow. Getting an electric kettle for up here really had been a saving grace. The sunlight slanted in and Ben wondered how hot it would be today. It wasn’t even June yet, but he already couldn’t wait for fall.

_need ur honest opinion,_ the next text read.

_What about Kit’s opinion?_ Ben texted back, before opening up the listings anyway.

_shes asleep,_ Kent replied, complete with a picture of Kit, curled in a patch of sunshine with her chin resting on her paws and her whiskers going every which way.

_First one has no yard. Second one is gonna need a lot of work. Third one is ok, but what were they thinking when they painted everything so dark? And that kitchen is TINY._

_thats what i told penny._ For fuck’s sake, was Kent allergic to capital letters and apostrophes?

Ben thought for a second. _Do you want something ready to move into? Or are you willing to do some work?_

He had to wait a moment for the response. _dunno, i thought ready but nothing is right._

That made Ben laugh aloud. _You’ve only been looking for a day, Kent,_ he thought to himself, shaking his head. Maybe 21-year-olds making more money than they knew what to do with could settle on a multimillion-dollar house purchase at the drop of a hat, but finding a home took time. He and Marian had looked for months. He remembered all the debates about what was non-negotiable and what they were willing to compromise over like they’d happened yesterday. A big yard with a tree for a swing for Sam had been important; a multi-car garage not so much. And now he had a home he had no intention of leaving.

_It takes time. The house is out there,_ he finally texted back before setting his phone aside and getting back to work.

Not even half an hour later, he found himself pulling up real estate listings online. What would Kent Parson want? Maybe some land, spacious but not overwhelming. Not in the middle of the town, but not too far outside of it, either. He quickly scrolled past listings for gingerbread-bedecked Queen Annes. A couple of mid-century modern homes appealed to him, but he didn’t think they would work for Kent. He dismissed the gaudy new McMansions out of hand.

A late-19th-century Arts and Crafts house caught his eye. It needed a fair amount of work—the kitchen had last been renovated in the early 1990s, probably, and there were some very questionable choices in most of the bathrooms. But it looked, to Ben’s only-somewhat-trained eye, like all the original built-ins were there: bookshelves around the fireplaces, the pocket doors in the wide doorways on the main floor, the window-seats in the wide bay windows that just invited a person or a cat to curl up and watch the world go by. The original hardwood floors might still be there, too. Those were the kinds of things that made the soul of a house, the kinds of things that had drawn Marian and Ben to their home. The kinds of things that maybe didn’t strike a young kid looking for a house with bells and whistles, but maybe would appeal to a man looking for a home.

_You’re getting soft, Wright,_ Ben thought to himself. _When’d you get so invested in Kent and his house hunt?_ He closed all the open tabs except for that Arts and Crafts house and got back to work.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

At some point, Ben guessed he and Kent became friends. He wasn’t absolutely clear on when it happened. Kent and Sam still went out to lunch on Saturdays, but Ben left that time to them. The three of them hadn’t spent any time together since that Chinese dinner. But Ben and Kent texted almost daily, little updates about Kent’s house-hunt, and Kit, and the frustrations of parenting a teenager.

_On Saturday, if Sam asks,_ he texted one morning after an argument as Sam was leaving for school, _please tell her she is not getting a car for her birthday._

Kent replied quickly. _is she taking driving lessons? does she need a car? i can buy one_

_Yes, no, and definitely not,_ Ben shot back. He added: _It’s about her learning responsibility, not about money._

_do U need new car?_ Kent sent. _bc ive seen the piece of shit u drive._

_Thanks, asshole,_ Ben replied. His Subaru still drove just fine, thank you very much. He wasn’t going to replace it until he absolutely had to.

Yeah, they were friends. In those first dark months after Marian died, Ben wasn’t sure he’d ever enjoy socializing with another human being again. They’d done so many things together for so long, and all of his friends were _their_ friends. They, too, were grieving the loss of their friend. Sometimes Ben couldn’t stand to be around all that sadness, those expectations that he, too, be sad in the right way.

With Kent, he didn’t constantly feel the need to play the part of grieving widower. His grief was still there, and he knew it probably always would be. But if he cracked a joke or forgot for a split second that his wife had died far too young, it was okay. And then the times he was caught off-guard by sorrow that felt as though he was being hollowed out by a rusty spoon, like in the Daily Grind, Kent left him space and accepted his feelings without sharing them or questioning them. It was… _nice,_ Ben supposed, for lack of a better word.

_i’ll buy u a new car. do u like the new bmw 5 series?_

Ben groaned aloud and hit the call icon by Kent’s name. When Kent picked up, he cut over his hello. “I don’t need a new car, and I’m not gonna drive a BMW.”

Kent was laughing on the other end, the asshole. “Yeah, sure, keep telling yourself that. That Subaru is one pothole away from disintegrating underneath you.”

“Kent, if a new BMW turns up in my driveway, I’m having it towed. You know what BMW stands for? _Big Money Waster.”_

Kent’s splutters were audible even over the cell speakers.

“And besides,” Ben finished, “I’m really more of a Porsche guy. When Sam is grown up and I’m retired, I’m getting a Porsche 911.”

“Wow, okay. See if I ever give you a ride anywhere ever again.” Ben refrained from pointing out that he’d only ridden in Kent’s i8 once. “Wanna get dinner tomorrow night?”

The sudden turn in the conversation caught Ben off guard. “Uh, I guess? But Sam’s spending the night at Anna’s.” She and Anna had been inseparable since late elementary school and their time together was sacred. No boring dinner with adults, no matter how much she liked Kent and loved her dad, would get in the way of the important business of teenage girls.

“Yeah, she told me about that last Saturday. I meant do you, Ben Wright, want to get dinner with me tomorrow night?”

Now Ben was confused. “You want to get dinner with me?”

“Yeah, you know, since we both care about Sam. And I figure you could stand to get out of the house a little more and ride in a real car.”

Ben’s mouth curved upwards against his will. “You and your real car can meet me at Moretti Brothers on Elmdale at 7:30. I’ll make us a reservation.”

“Fine, be that way. See you then.” Kent hung up. Ben pulled the phone away from his ear to check, but, yep, Kent had hung up.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

“Dad.” Sam’s tone was completely deadpan. “Dad, you’ve been fiddling with your collar for the last five minutes.” She was bustling around the house, gathering up her headphones, tablet, least embarrassing pajamas, the snacks she’d insisted Ben buy during their weekly grocery store run, and five new colors of nail polish. Ben never failed to be surprised how many bags Sam required for a sleepover weekend at the Christoffers’ house.

“So? Are you ready to go yet?” Ben made himself pull his hand away from the collar of his blue Oxford. He’d tried and discarded several options—his favorite heather-gray henley was too casual, but anything featuring dress shoes or, heaven forbid, a tie was definitely too fancy. He’d settled on this well-worn, fitted button-down and his favorite dark-wash jeans. Sam definitely didn’t need to know how much thought had gone into this outfit.

Sam set the third bag next to the mudroom door. “Yep, ready! Are you ready? It’s just Kent.”

Ben pocketed his wallet and keys. “Yeah, just Kent,” he replied, shoving his feet into his ancient Chucks. _Definitely not dress shoes._ He picked up two of Sam’s bags. “Let’s go.”

Twenty minutes later, he’d dropped Sam off at Anna’s, made small talk with Mrs. Christoffers, and was still fifteen minutes early for the dinner reservation. He was sure Mrs. Christoffers was trying to set him up with her widowed older sister, which was sweet but misguided. It was too soon for anything new. Marian hadn’t even been in the ground for a year and a half.

She’d made him promise that he wouldn’t be lonely without her. Those were her words: “Don’t be lonely, Ben,” she’d said. “I know how easy it is for you to forget that you need other people.” _What about Sam,_ he’d asked. _She’s another person, and you’re trusting me to take care of her. That’s so much, already._ “Oh, Ben,” she’d replied, covering his hand with both of hers, small and dry and cold. “Sam’s got you. You’ve got her. Shh, you do.” He’d been about to protest, and she knew it. “But don’t martyr yourself for her, or for me. _Don’t be lonely,_ Ben.”

He guessed this counted as trying, following the spirit of her request if perhaps not the letter. He didn’t think she’d meant the absentee biological father of her daughter when she’d told him not to be lonely. He and Kent were friends, anyway; she’d been talking about another partner. He wasn’t naïve enough that he didn’t know that.

Ben was startled out of his trance by a tap at his window. His head jerked up. Kent was bent over, glancing in. Ben unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door. “Penny for your thoughts?” Kent asked.

“Déjà vu all over again,” Ben replied.

“Marian?” Kent reached out and rested his hand on Ben’s shoulder. Ben startled at the touch, unexpected as it was. Kent quickly pulled away. Ben sighed.

“Yeah, sorry.” Ben locked the car—manually, the Subaru was too old to have a fancy remote lock. He pocketed the key.

Kent’s hand was back on his shoulder, and this time Ben didn’t flinch away. “She was your wife,” he said. “No need to apologize. Still up for dinner?”

“Yeah. Yeah, let’s go.” Somehow, the air felt a little lighter and clearer.

Kent led the way into the restaurant. “Two, reservation under Wright,” he said. Ben wasn’t quite sure how Kent had taken charge here, but he didn’t mind. The maître d’ led them to a small table towards the back of the restaurant and placed the menus on the table before disappearing soundlessly.

After looking over the menu—he knew it like the back of his hand, and already knew he’d be getting a salad and the rack of lamb—Ben flipped over to the wine list. “I was thinking about a glass of Chianti. Do you want to split a bottle?”

“Sure, why not?” Kent replied. “Let me order, dinner’s on me.” Ben opened his mouth to protest, but Kent beat him to the punch. “No buts. I invited you. And don’t order something cheaper than you’d wanted to. I’ll know.”

Ben smiled. “Fine. What’s the occasion for the dinner anyway?”

Kent smiled. “No occasion.” He paused. “Well, okay, I actually wanted to ask what you thought about a house.”

At that moment, the waiter arrived, and Kent gestured quietly to the wine list. “And the clams, please. Thanks.”

_“Vongole al limone?”_ Ben asked. He couldn’t speak Italian beyond ordering food, but Marian had always thought his accent was pretty good.

Kent was clearly trying not to smile. “Yeah, that’s the one. Sorry I didn’t have time to perfect my Italian accent, too busy working on my slapshot.”

_“Je parle pas italien, mais ich kann ein bisschen deutsch sprechen.”_ Ben was laughing now, sprawled gracelessly in his chair. His foot bumped against Kent’s under the table and he didn’t bother to move it. The waiter brought their wine, and Kent went through the whole ritual of studying the label, swirling, sniffing, sipping. At his nod, the waiter poured two glasses and left the bottle on the table.

_“Je parle un peu de français,”_ Kent replied. His accent was atrocious. “My first boyfriend was Québécois.” He looked slightly wary, somehow, and Ben didn’t want to startle him.

“It’s _un peu français,_ not _un peu de,_ first of all. Second of all, Québécois isn’t real French.” Ben figured if Kent really did want to talk about his first boyfriend, he could do so. He was all about offering conversational outs these days.

The wary look was gone from around Kent’s eyes when Ben looked up at him. “Oh, Jack would fucking kill you. He spent weeks one summer trying to teach me and he kept giving up because he said my accent was awful. Oh my God, I haven’t thought about that in ages. Jack and I are friends again now, but things didn’t end well back then. I’d remind him about trying to teach me French but he’d just give me so much shit.”

At that moment, their clams arrived, perfectly plated on their half-shells and swimming in a light lemon sauce. Kent gestured that Ben should help himself, so Ben took one of the clams and speared it with his fork.

“Anyway. Jack made me skittish about a lot of things. So when I started seeing Marian after that…” He trailed off before continuing. “The way things ended explains why I ran away from Marian and Sam, but doesn’t excuse it.” He swallowed a clam and then grimaced. “Fuck, I sound like my therapist now. _Explains but doesn’t excuse.”_

Ben smiled. “Thanks for telling me. I don’t blame you, I don’t think. I don’t understand it. Sam’s maybe the best thing to ever happen to me, besides Marian, so I don’t understand. But I am glad you’re getting to know her now.”

The clams were gone, as was Ben’s first glass of wine.

“Me, too. She’s such a good kid, Ben.”

“Yeah, she is,” Ben replied. “Anyway, what was that you said about a house?” The mood had gotten a little too heavy for Ben’s taste and he hoped house talk would lighten it back up.

Kent pulled his phone out of his pocket. “Yeah! I think it might be the one. Penny sent it over last week, and I went to see it a couple days ago. It needs some work but it feels good. Everyone keeps telling me about how important that is.” He tapped at the screen and then handed his phone over to Ben.

And there was the Arts and Crafts house. He was pretty sure its listing was still open in his browser. He swiped through the photos, but he knew it was the same house. There was no mistaking those beautiful bookcases surrounding the fireplace or the window seat that he’d thought would be perfect for Kit.

He set the phone down before he looked up. “I’ve seen this house. Or, the listing, anyway. I… when you were sending me all those houses that were wrong, I spent a little time trawling listings online. This was the house I liked best.”

Ben couldn’t read Kent’s expression. “You were looking at houses for me?”

Ben nodded but didn’t say anything. He couldn’t tell if Kent was pleased or angry.

“And you liked this one.”

Ben nodded again. Of course, the waiter showed up again at that moment with their main courses, and he refilled their wine glasses. Ben took a steadying sip of the Chianti, which was really excellent. Kent had good taste.

The pause went on just a moment too long, and Ben glanced up from his glass just as Kent opened his mouth to speak. “Thanks. I’m glad you see it, too.”

“It’s a good house, Kent. The work it needs isn’t overwhelming, and I’m sure your realtor sang the praises of all the original woodwork. It’s big but not too big, and it could be a family home someday, if that’s what you wanted.”

“Penny told me not to jump into anything, go back and have a second viewing. I think her exact words were _sleep on it._ So I’m going back tomorrow morning. Do you want to come? You know more about renovating houses and original woodwork than I do.”

Ben let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Yeah, I’d love to. What time?”

Kent smiled as though he, too, was glad to have come out on the other side of this conversation. “10?”

“Yeah,” Ben replied, “10 is good. I’ll pick you up, you can ride in the Subaru and I can finally catch a glimpse of your monstrosity.”

“Which would require you knowing where it is, so no. Nice try.”

Ben took a bite of his lamb. “Yeah, it was worth a try. We can meet there. How’s your steak?”

“You knew it would be good,” Kent said. “It’s beating my expectations.”

They ate in companionable silence until their plates were clean. Kent poured the last of the wine into their glasses, and leaned back in his seat. “How are you doing?” he asked.

Ben should have known that this was coming. It had been sixteen months, and it still hurt in ways he couldn’t put into words. Marian wasn’t always his first thought every morning, but by the time he’d drunk his coffee, he’d realized some new way of missing her. “Last week, the dentist’s office called to remind her that she hadn’t been in for a check-up and cleaning recently. The poor receptionist. I couldn’t say anything for the longest time, and then I finally managed to say that she died. Was dead. Is dead.” He paused to wipe furiously at his eyes. He wasn’t going to cry here, in public, at his favorite Italian restaurant with Kent. “I’m a goddamn book editor and I don’t know what verb tense to use anymore.”

He paused. Kent didn’t interrupt, so he kept going. “It’s never going to be okay, but it’s also stopped blindsiding me every time I turn around. Just half the times. Sam and I talk about her a lot.” Kent hmmed quietly. “That hurts, but it helps, too.”

Ben looked down and realized he’d twisted the cloth napkin in his lap completely without realizing it. He stopped, smoothed it out. “I’ll always miss her. It won’t ever be fair. But I’m trying to be okay.” Somehow, that was more honest than he’d managed to be with anyone except Sam and his therapist in a very long time.

Kent reached across the table and rested his hand on Ben’s elbow—there it was again, that casual touch. Ben couldn’t decide how he felt about it but didn’t want to pull away, either. Kent didn’t, either. And somehow, Ben felt a little easier.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

At 10 the next morning, Ben sprinted from his front door to the Subaru, managed to get it unlocked without spilling the cup of coffee in his other hand or dropping his phone, which was open to his maps app. He could almost hear Sam yelling at him— _When will you just get a damn travel mug, Dad?_

It had just been one of those mornings. Both he and Sam had overslept. He’d gotten her out the door and onto the bus, and he didn’t think she’d forgotten anything. Maybe she’d had a granola bar in hand instead of eating a real breakfast, but that happened sometimes. He’d sat down to do a few hours’ work, editing a book on 1960s music whose author had somehow managed to mishear the lyrics to just about every song he quoted. Just as he’d been getting ready to pack up to meet Kent, his boss at one of the presses had called him and wanted to talk about the feedback he’d given another author. Ben stood by everything he’d written on that manuscript, but he’d had to talk his boss down and by the time he finally hung up, it was 9:58am. _Fuck._

Once he’d started the car, Ben sent Kent a quick text. _It’s been a morning, I’ll be a few minutes late. Sorry._

Kent’s reply was almost instantaneous. _dont even worry c u soon_

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Ben’s breath left him all at once as he pulled down the drive. In his experience, real estate photos were carefully calculated to make a house look better than it really was without actually misrepresenting it. But this house was just as spectacular as the photos. If it were his, he’d repaint it—the neutral stucco with forest-green trim did nothing for him and they probably weren’t the original colors.

But the wrap-around sun porch and the way the house perched on a slight rise in the land to give it four stories of windows looking out over its wooded, sloping lot were spectacular. To say that the landscaping needed work was probably an understatement—there wasn’t any. The grass was scraggly, there were no flowers, and the fence that bordered one side of the lot was falling down. Ben wasn’t even sure why it was there, since the closest neighbor on that side was almost a quarter-mile down the road.

Suddenly, Kent was at his window, bouncing like an overeager puppy. “You made it! Penny and I were just about to get started. Isn’t it amazing?”

Ben got out and locked the car before he answered. “It really is.” He grinned. “Let’s see what the inside looks like.”

Kent laughed. “Yeah, the kitchen is as bad as the photos make it look.”

A tall woman in her mid-40s with a strikingly short haircut, towering heels, and a perfectly tailored black sheath dress walked up to them. “You must be Ben. Kent said he was bringing a friend along as a second set of eyes. I’m Penny McIntyre.” She held out her hand for Ben to shake, and her grip was as firm as he’d expected.

“Penny. It’s a beautiful house.”

“It really is, and I think it would work well for Kent. It was built in 1894 in the Arts and Crafts style by a wealthy logging family, who owned it until the late 1940s. It has five bedrooms and five bathrooms and it’s just over 4,000 square feet.” She opened the front door and waved them through. “After you gentlemen,” she said.

The entranceway had been—modernized, Ben guessed would be the generous word. “Are the bannisters original?” he asked, running a hand over the white-painted wood. The wallpaper running up the stairs made him feel like the world was spinning and mis-focusing the way it had the one time he’d done ecstasy in his early 20s. It would have to go, obviously.

“They are,” Penny replied. “They’ve been painted, but that could be stripped. Most of the original wood in the house is unpainted. You know something about Arts and Crafts houses?”

“Not Arts and Crafts specifically, but my wife and I renovated a 1920s foursquare ten years ago. I love all the original wood in this house.” Kent didn’t touch him this time, but Ben could feel him hovering right at his back. It was comforting.

Penny stepped ahead into the main living room. “Ah, then you’ll enjoy these. Original fireplace, which is still set up for wood-burning, and of course the built-in bookcases and the window seat. And you can’t miss that fantastic stained-glass window.”

The living room was framed by the sun porch, so its windows didn’t look directly outside, but that didn’t seem to have a detrimental effect on the sunlight in the south-facing room. Ben ran his hands reverently over the shelves. “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, huh?” Kent said.

“No, they don’t. And that stained-glass window is beautiful. How do you get out to the sunporch?”

“This way.” Penny smoothly gestured to a door opposite the fireplace. “It was added well after the house was built, but is completely in keeping with the style of the house.” She pointed out the beautiful beadboard ceilings and the way the windows matched those in the main house. No mention was made of the terrible olive-green color on the walls. Ben hoped someone had told Kent that paint colors were one of the easiest things to change, even if they were often the first thing about a house that screamed _wrong._

Their next stop was a second sitting room, not quite as impressive as the first, but still a good size. And there were the original pocket doors Ben had spotted in the listing, connecting the two living rooms. He’d been so focused on the sun-porch and the shelves that he hadn’t turned around to notice them.

Suddenly, Kent grabbed his hand and pulled him through the dining room, with its beautiful stained-glass details at the top of the windows that lined the south wall. “Okay, enough with the wood, time for you to see the real gem of this house.” Penny’s heels tapped as she followed them at speed. Kent slipped a hand over Ben’s eyes as he pulled him along.

“You idiot, now I can’t _see–”_ Then the hand was gone and—wow. Ben burst into laughter. “Oh my _God._ It’s _so bad.”_ Shiny oak veneer cabinets filled one wall, and all the appliances were straight from the early 1990s. The backsplash was ugly laminate and clashed with the countertops. _“Wow.”_

“Right?” Kent said. “It’s somehow even worse than the pictures made it seem. It looks like my parents’ kitchen when I was little, and they had the good sense to re-do it.”

Ben paced out the distance between the counter and the island, and the length of the cabinet-covered wall. “Okay. So, it’s awful, but… it’s plenty big and the layout is fine, functional. You could get a breakfast bar there” – he gestured – “and even though the table they have in here is too big for the space, you can still put a pretty good-sized table there. Like, family-dinner sized, not entertaining-all-the-guests sized. That’s why there’s the dining room.” He paused. “Sorry. You have Penny to tell you all this.”

Penny smiled. “I mentioned a few things I thought could be done with the kitchen, yes. But you have a good eye.”

Kent nodded. “It’s why I brought him along.” He turned to Ben and added, “Want to see upstairs?”

“Let’s go. Get me out of this kitchen!”

Kent smiled. “Oh, the bathrooms are pretty terrible. And wait ‘till you see the master bedroom.”

They returned to the entrance hall with its trippy wallpaper. “Hey, any idea why the floors aren’t original?” They were hardwood, but modern, Ben thought, rather than original.

“Penny will know. I kind of hate them, honestly.” Ben agreed; the blonde floors clashed with the rich, dark-stained oak built-ins and did nothing for the house.

“Another thing you can change,” Ben said, “and if you’re lucky, the original boards will still be underneath.”

Kent cocked an eyebrow at Ben. “How do you _know_ all this shit? I know, I know, you and Marian renovated your house, but you can lay hardwood on top of other hardwood?”

“I learned some stuff while Marian and I renovated our house, but my dad also insisted I learn how to work with my hands. He was always getting up to some home-improvement project when I was a kid.” Ben started up the stairs. “Now, what was that about bathrooms and a master bedroom?”

At the top, Kent steered him to the left. “Okay, just glance in here.”

The same granite covered the counters, walls, and… “The floor, too? Jesus. Granite is one thing but, wow.”

“Yep, okay. Now, this way.” They continued around the landing, Kent steering Ben. “The master bedroom!”

It was spacious, with big windows on two walls. Like the rest of the house, Ben was sure they were the original frames and glass. Even the paint color was not offensive, just a pale cream that would make any realtor happy. “What–” Ben started. 

Kent pushed his shoulder until he spun in a circle. “Stop looking at the windows. Focus on the rest of the room.”

The other shoe dropped. “Two king beds.”

“Yep.” Kent wasn’t even trying to keep the grin off his face.

Ben looked back and forth between the beds, as though one of them would disappear in a puff of smoke. “Two. Two king beds.”

“Uh-huh. Don’t say it again.”

“But… why?” Ben’s face, the picture of confusion, was how Kent was sure his had looked when Penny had shown him the master on his first visit to the house.

“Buddy, your guess is as good as mine. As Penny helpfully told me, imagine how spacious it will be with only one bed!”

Ben chuckled. “Yeah, well, she’s right. Who are these people, though? What’s up with their house?”

Kent raised his eyebrows. “I know. Some things are just so perfect, and other things are just so fucking absurd. Oh, but—wait, check this out.”

“This” turned out to be the biggest walk-in closet Ben had ever seen. It was as big as the smallest bedroom in his house, honestly. “Isn’t it great?” Kent asked.

“I mean, I wouldn’t buy the house for it, but it’s pretty great,” Ben replied. He turned around to leave and suddenly found himself face-to-face with Kent.

“Hey,” he said, his stomach suddenly filled with butterflies for no reason he could place.

Kent lifted a hand to his face. “Stop me if I’m wrong,” he said, and leaned in, touching his lips softly to Ben’s. It was hardly a kiss, really, just a press of lips. Ben was motionless. Kent pulled back just enough to brush his thumb gently across Ben’s lower lip before leaning back in to kiss him again—a real kiss, this time.

Startled back to his senses, Ben pulled away. He didn’t miss the way a cloud passed over Kent’s face. “You’re—you’re not wrong,” he said.

“But?” Kent asked.

“But it’s too soon for me, Kent. I’m sorry. And with Sam…” Ben sighed. “You aren’t wrong, but I can’t.”

Kent let out a matching sigh. “Yeah. You’re probably right, I shouldn’t have ambushed you like that.”

Ben paused to gather his thoughts. “It was hardly an ambush. I like being with you. I’m glad you’re in our lives, me and Sam. And this isn’t me telling you to get out of our lives.” He paused again. “Or even me telling you that this will never happen. I like you, Kent Parson. But I always thought Marian and I would be–” He pursed his lips to try to control his emotions. “I always thought we’d be together forever. It’s too soon.”

Kent reached out and then pulled back, as if deciding halfway into the gesture that maybe Ben didn’t want to be touched by him.

Ben laughed a little thickly. “Come here, we both probably need a hug.” Kent let himself be reeled in willingly. It was a change to hug someone nearly as tall as he was; Marian had been tiny, and Ben topped six feet. Ben tucked his nose into the crook of Kent’s neck for just a moment before pulling away. He was the one putting the brakes on this scenario. He didn’t need to be cruel about it, too.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

They’d finished touring the house. The grounds needed as much work as Ben had suspected, and there were some odd features in the basement—a wine “cellar” that appeared to be just walls in an otherwise-useless space lined with lengths of 4” PVC pipe, for one. After rejoining Penny downstairs, they’d let her conduct the rest of the tour. If she noticed that Ben was making fewer comments or Kent pointing out fewer things he thought Ben might like, she was professional enough not to say anything.

But Ben hadn’t heard from Kent in two days. He knew he couldn’t be the one to reach out. He’d shut Kent down; he had to wait. He hadn’t been aware of how frequently he and Kent texted until he suddenly couldn’t text him about the jar of pasta sauce he’d dropped _(pasta sauce everywhere, seriously, fuck everything),_ or the stupid author who insisted on capitalizing nouns that _did not need capitalized, Janet._

He knew he was being unfair. After all, he’d asked for space, and now he was begrudging that it was being given. Maybe they had gotten too close too quickly. He should’ve seen it coming, he supposed, but he hadn’t.

“Dad!” Sam called in that sharp way that meant she’d been calling him for several minutes.

“What’s up, Sam?” he called back.

She thundered down the stairs and skidded to a stop in the kitchen doorway in her sock feet. “I _said,_ have you heard from Kent? He hasn’t texted me back in two days, and usually we’ve picked a lunch place by this time in the week.” She began poking through the cupboards while Ben sat in stunned silence.

“Huh. No, I haven’t either, and I was…” He trailed off and reevaluated his phrasing. “I was wondering if something had come up with him.”

Sam took a bite from a strawberry fruit leather. Ben hadn’t even known there were fruit leathers in the cupboard. “Weird. If you hear from him, tell him to text me back!” And just like that, she was gone again.

Ben called after her, “Don’t spoil your dinner!” He knew the effort was futile but he continued to try.

The only response he got was the sound of her door closing upstairs. _Ugh, teenagers._

His phone rang and he startled before scrabbling through his work papers that were spread out all over the kitchen table to find it. Marian had always given him shit for the way his work always took over whatever flat surface he was using as a desk. Ben’s heart sunk just a bit when he realized it was not Kent calling, but his mom. Then he felt guilty. They’d planned to talk and he’d forgotten.

He swiped on the phone icon. “Hey, Mom,” he said, hoping none of the jangle of emotions that the ringing phone had caused were audible in his voice.

“Ben, honey! How are you? How’s Sam?”

Maybe he’d dodged the bullet. “We’re alright. Sam’s got that annual Model UN conference trip coming up, so I’ve been learning a lot about the economy of Kyrgyzstan. She’s upstairs, I’m sure she’ll tell you more about it. Do you want to talk to her?”

“In a little while. I called up my favorite son; my favorite granddaughter and I talked two days ago.”

_Shit._ “Your only son, Mom.” It was a sign that he was caught, and he knew it.

“And when my only son forgets not one but two phone calls to his dear mother, she has a right to want to talk to him when he does answer the phone. What’s up, Ben? Don’t think I didn’t notice that you didn’t answer that question earlier.”

Ben set about making a cup of tea as she talked. He loved his mother, but she wouldn’t hesitate to talk his ear off and she always wanted to know more than he wanted to tell her. He understood _why,_ now that he was a parent himself. But it didn’t mean it didn’t take him right back to being a teenager who’d been caught in a white lie about his whereabouts.

“Nothing’s up, Mom. Just busy with work. Karina’s really getting after me about this one project. The author is a nightmare and thinks that taking it out on my boss will get me to turn his manuscript around in a week. It’s _eight hundred pages long,_ so there’s no way.” Ben pulled the teabag out of his mug and tossed it in the garbage before pulling out the kitchen chair and propping his socked feet up on the windowsill.

“Mhm,” his mom replied. He could see her in his mind’s eye, sipping a cup of tea of her own, elbows propped on the kitchen counter as she gazed out the kitchen window. “And how’s Kent?”

“Kent?” Ben was caught off guard. “Doesn’t Sam keep you posted on their lunch outings?”

His mother hummed into the phone again. “She does. But she also told me that you’d gone out to dinner with him. And that was _interesting,_ Ben, since you haven’t gone to dinner with anyone but your father and me and Sam–”

“–since Marian died,” Ben interrupted. _“Shit.”_

“Language, Ben,” his mother chastised. He was thirty-seven goddamn years old and his mother was still getting after him for swearing. “Did it have anything to do with the house he’s been looking for?”

“Sort of, I guess. But it was also just… friends getting dinner, I thought. But.”

Silence from the other end of the line.

“But then I agreed to go with him to look at this house—it’s perfect for him, I’d found it online and thought so even before he showed it to me. And then he kissed me, and I told him it was too soon, and we haven’t spoken in two days.” Ben felt fourteen again, talking to his mom about his romantic muddles. She’d helped him make sense of his feelings for Eric Brownlee, and then baked him cookies. She’d let him talk through his funk when he was eighteen and Missy Coleman broke up with him two weeks before they left for college. He hadn’t wanted to tell her all this—he was grown up now, after all, and hadn’t taken his romantic woes to her since just before he proposed to Marian—but he somehow felt better for having done so.

“Hmm,” his mom said. “I wondered. The last few times we’ve talked, almost the first thing you’ve told me about is Kent and his house search.”

Ben opened his mouth to protest before he realized… yeah, that was probably true. Before he figured out what to say to that, his mom continued. “You didn’t like him much when he first showed up. You had every right not to. But, honey, don’t let that stand in the way.”

“Mom!” Ben had to protest. She had it wrong. “I didn’t, you’re right. But he’s grown on me, and he’s important to Sam. But it’s still… too soon. And, anyway, I’m not letting anything stand in the way. Kent isn’t speaking to _me,_ not the other way around.”

“So when will the time be right, Ben?” His mother always did see right through him.

“That’s beside the point, Mom. Can we talk about your book club yet?”

“No, honey, it’s not beside the point and you know it. And anyway, Tahlia hasn’t done anything outrageous recently and we’re reading a biography of Karl Marx. I will kill whoever put that in the suggestion pile. Maybe Kent won’t make you happy, but maybe it’s time to think about trying again.”

Ben was silent. He knew his mom was right, but he hadn’t even considered for himself what dating as a widower might look like. If he’d imagined it at all, he might’ve envisioned dates with others who had lost their spouse. Some crying, some hand-holding, all in soft focus. That seemed easier than trying to go on dates with other thirty-somethings and having to tell them he was a widower. And when did you broach that subject? Before the first date? After two dates? More importantly still, _how_ did you broach the subject? “Yeah, I thought I was set for life. Then she died.”

And even if he’d thought about both those options, he definitely hadn’t thought about Kent fucking Parson.

“...Ben? Ben, honey, are you still there?” His mom’s voice broke through his thoughts.

“Sorry, Mom, I’m still here. Just thinking.”

His mom chuckled. “About Kent?”

Ben huffed out a laugh and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah. I guess I should try getting in touch with him again, shouldn’t I?”

He knew his mom was rolling her eyes on the other end of the line. “Yes. Yes, Ben. Talking about it was the answer when you were seventeen, and twenty, and it’s the answer now. How do you think your dad and I managed to stay together all these years? Now, I was thinking of taking those cherry-chocolate-chunk cookies to the neighborhood potluck, but Mina’s granddaughter is allergic to cherries. I’ve never heard of someone being allergic to cherries before…”

Ben closed his eyes and let the neighborhood gossip about people he barely knew wash over him.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

When Ben and his mom finally hung up, after he’d heard about the neighborhood potluck and the steering committee trying to find a replacement for the pastor at his parents’ church and her friends’ grandchildren, he had worked up enough courage to try texting Kent. Probably something simple: _Sorry. Can we still be friends?_

Of course, it turned out that he didn’t need to. Among the notifications on his phone: three new texts from Kent, who was still in his phone as “Parson.” Suddenly, Ben was steeling himself to read texts, rather than send them.

_ok i miss texting u_

_im gonna buy the house_

Then, twenty minutes later: _shit buying houses is so complicated id forgotten_

It was somehow so thoroughly Kent—an almost-admission of feelings before he went on to other subjects—that Ben couldn’t help but laughing as he texted back.

_I was just going to text you. I’m glad you’re buying the house. It’s a good house._

Kent’s reply was almost instantaneous, and Ben felt a welcome surge of relief. _yeah it is,_ followed by a string of thumbs up, 100, and grinning emojis. Kent’s devotion to emojis would probably always be puzzling to Ben, who felt hip if he included more than one emoji in a single text. And probably the fact that he thought of that as “hip” was part of the problem.

_ill have a housewarming once i move in, ur invited and sam_

Ben took a moment to parse that text, before replying: _Wouldn’t miss it. Good luck with your offer!_

_Thx_

Well. That was that. Ben would figure out what his next move was later. After an emotionally draining conversation with his mother and the relief of re-establishing communication with Kent, he was going for a run.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

Ben should have known that _that_ was not _that_ when it came to Kent Parson. He’d thought they’d texted constantly about the process of finding a house. Now, he was getting texts at midnight about countertops.

_y are there 293857298357 kinds of countertops_

_granite is good, right?_

_or butcher block_

_but then is there to much wood in my house???_

Ben finished loading the dishwasher and pushed it closed with his foot as he typed out his response.

_It’s up to you. Granite’s good but it’s really easy to break dishes on it or chip the countertop. What colors are you thinking now?_ He resisted making the easy joke about “too much wood” in Kent’s house, both because it was maybe too soon and also because he, unlike Kent, was not twelve.

_gray?? dark gray maybe?_

Ben did a quick Google image search for gray cabinets and butcher-block countertops and texted a couple of his favorites to Kent. He added: _You know, we can always talk about this in person._ They hadn’t actually seen each other since the kiss apart from in passing as Kent picked Sam up or dropped her off. He was even letting her drive sometimes, which Sam loved but Ben hated. No sixteen-year-old needed to drive even Kent’s second-best car.

_yeah good call_

_tomorrow at 10?_

That was quick. _Sure,_ Ben replied. _Come over, I’ll have coffee and breakfast._

He started the dishwasher and opened the fridge, trying to figure out how he was going to feed an ex-NHLer breakfast in ten hours and trying to tamp down his nerves at the prospect.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Kent showed up armed with folders containing piles and piles of brochures: countertops, cabinets, sinks, appliances, tiles, windows, paint, floors. And they were only for kitchens. Ben saw nothing about bathrooms, and knew Kent would also have those redone before he moved in.

“Here, sit,” Ben said, kicking out one of the kitchen chairs as he shoved aside a pile of his own papers to make room for Kent’s stack. “Coffee’ll be ready in a minute, and I made blueberry coffee cake.”

Kent sat and cut right to the chase. “Ben, this is worse than buying the damn house!”

Ben laughed as he pulled down a couple of mugs from the cabinet next to the window and set the coffee cake on the table. “Here, have some coffee. There’s milk and sugar on the table.” He doctored his own coffee and grabbed the top brochure. It was for space-age kitchen appliances that had fancier touch-screens than his first smartphone had. He grimaced and set it back on the pile.

“How did you and Marian make all the decisions with this house?” Kent finally asked, having taken a sip of coffee.

Ben drank some of his own coffee. “Well, part of it was ‘we’re young and buying the house took all our savings so laminate countertops it is,’” he said a bit ruefully. “And we lived with a bunch of stuff for a long time after we moved in. You don’t have to do everything all at once.”

Kent sighed. “I want it to feel like home, you know?”

_Of course,_ Ben thought. It made sense: moving back to sleepy, small-town upstate New York after years in a swanky condo in larger-than-life Las Vegas meant that everything was changing. And from what little Ben knew of Kent’s life, it had been a long time since he had somewhere that felt as comfortably lived-in as Ben’s own home. From major junior hockey to the NHL career that kept him on the road for much of the year and split between Vegas and a big house he hated, “home” maybe was an elusive idea for Kent.

Ben covered for his slow response by cutting a big slice of coffee cake and sliding it and a fork in Kent’s direction before serving himself an equally generous slice. “Home takes time. But I guess the kitchen is a good place to start. Gray, right? Did you like any of those pictures I sent you?”

Kent hummed around a forkful of cake. “Yeah, that one with the really dark gray cabinets and the big farmhouse sink was nice.” Ben had liked that one, too; the counters were a little darker and he thought it would fit well with the rest of the wood in the house. There was enough natural light coming into the kitchen that the dark finishes would feel upscale rather than oppressive.

“Okay. So that’s where we’ll start, then.” He flipped through the stack of brochures and set aside the irrelevant ones.

An hour and change later, they’d demolished half the coffee cake and a second pot of coffee, and Kent had a viable plan to take to his contractor.

“So, where are you going to live while they gut your kitchen?” Ben asked as he cleared the table.

Kent groaned. “Don’t remind me. I’m ready to move into a hotel, honestly.”

“Come stay with us.” The offer was fully formed and out in the air before Ben even really thought about it. He steadied himself with both hands on the countertop before he turned around to face Kent.

Kent looked as surprised as Ben had ever seen him and he seemed to be actually speechless. Ben blundered on to fill the silence. “I mean, it isn’t glamorous here. But we have a spare room, and Sam would be so excited if you and Kit were here for a while.”

Kent regained his voice. “I—let me think about it? I don’t want to impose, and I have a house.”

“That you hate. The offer isn’t going anywhere.” Ben had resorted to wiping invisible crumbs from the kitchen counters to cover the butterflies in his stomach that felt ready to burst out into the air between them. “Do you want some of this coffee cake to take with you?”

Kent, who had been gathering up his stack of brochures, keeping the rejects separated from the rest, turned around quickly. “Yeah, sure, but then I gotta go.”

Ben didn’t think he was imagining Kent’s urgency to leave that hadn’t been there a few minutes before. He wrapped up the coffee cake, trying to think of something to say to take them back to the ease of a few minutes earlier. _Fuck._ Just when it seemed they could overcome one communication problem, Ben had to go and fuck it all up again. He drew in the biggest breath he could before letting go of the counter and fully turning around.

“This is about the kiss, isn’t it?”

Kent froze for the second time, then nodded. “Yeah. You didn’t want to kiss me, but said I wasn’t completely off base. Now you want me to move in with you, even temporarily? I can’t deal with this whiplash.” 

He picked up his folders from the table. Ben reached out to stop him, not knowing what he was going to say but knowing he had to say something. “I–” He shook his head, brushed one thumb across Kent’s cheekbone, and kissed him. The folders were an uncomfortable intrusion between them, but Ben couldn’t bring himself to care. Never mind words, they were what had started this whole thing. Ben felt Kent’s fingers thread through his hair and he deepened the kiss.

As he did so, Kent pulled away and Ben’s stomach plummeted. It had felt so _good,_ for a second. But Kent’s hand was still in his hair, and he’d set down the folders. And that was Kent’s other hand, coming up to rest on his shoulder. “We should talk about this,” Kent said. “And I probably need to send my therapist a bouquet of flowers or something, for suggesting talking.”

Ben’s laugh was shaky even to his own ears. “Yeah, my mom said the same thing.” But they hadn’t pulled any farther apart, and so he still couldn’t regret this second impulsive kiss.

“Aren’t we a pair,” Kent said. It wasn’t a question, and his smile was wry.

Ben ducked his head to rest his forehead on Kent’s shoulder. The hand on his head smoothed his hair down as Kent stroked back and forth. The hand stopped, and Ben looked up, disappointed.

“We really need to talk, but first…” Kent’s lips were back on Ben’s and he returned the kiss hungrily, all thoughts of Sam and countertop finishes and impulsive invitations banished for a while.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

Six days later, Kent arrived with two suitcases, a box of things for Kit, and a cat carrier holding the princess herself. Ben wished he’d realized that Kent’s arrival also meant that his terrible car would be parked outside their house for the next six weeks or so. There was no way he could divest the tiny garage of enough shit to fit anything larger than a Smartcar.

They’d met back at Daily Grind the next day to talk. Ben hadn’t wanted them to be in his and Sam’s home if things didn’t go well, and he thought that Kent had felt the same. Ben had thought through all the pros and cons the night before in his head, and was prepared to make his case for both trying to date each other and Kent moving in while his house was under construction. The latter was simple practicality and keeping Sam happy; the former was maybe not practical at all but it was what Ben wanted and, he thought, what Kent wanted too. Maybe even something he’d wanted for longer than Ben had. And then Ben had come up with a second-best plan, where they gave dating a try but Kent didn’t stay. He figured it would be easier to convince Kent to move in later. Staying in the same house and not dating was asking for trouble.

To his surprise, though, it had been really easy. Kent had come to the same conclusions he had. Ben had learned a little more about Jack, Kent’s first serious boyfriend, and Michael, for whom the pressure of going back into the closet for a pro hockey player was too much. Kent talked about how he’d finally come out, three years ago. He could’ve come out years earlier, when Jack kissed Eric Bittle at center ice with the Stanley Cup on live national television. He hadn’t. Ben didn’t press any further.

Ben talked about Sam, and how important it was to him that they not hurt her or raise her expectations too quickly. (“So you’re in the guest room, Parson,” he said with a smile.) Kent had nudged his foot against Ben’s and simply nodded. And finally, voice cracking a little like it hadn’t in many months, Ben talked about Marian. About how he missed her, about how he hadn’t even considered dating anyone, about how he still loved her. And once again, Kent hadn’t said anything, just reached out for Ben’s hand and squeezed.

As they’d left Daily Grind, Kent bumped his shoulder against Ben’s. “Enough talking. Let’s go get ice cream.” And so they had.

Now, Kent was here. Ben helped him lug his suitcases inside and, once Kent had gotten her food and water and litterbox set up, Sam let Kit out of her carrier. She looked around warily before finally moseying out and making a beeline for the patch of sun on the living room rug. Kent laughed. “If she’s happy, I guess I can stay,” he said.

“Great! Hey, Dad, mac ‘n’ cheese for dinner tonight?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, if that’s okay with Kent,” Ben replied, watching Kent watch Kit.

Kent nodded. “Fine by me. I’m just gonna take my stuff upstairs and unpack a little, but then I can help if you need me.” He made no sign of actually moving, though.

“Don’t worry about it. Settle in, and you can do the dishes if you really want. Sam and I got this one.”

Sam leaned towards Kent and stage-whispered, “Pleeeeease do the dishes, Kent, if you love me at all. Pleeeeeease.”

Kent laughed, the real laugh that Ben loved, the one that made the crow’s feet around his eyes even more prominent. “Alright, Sam. But only because I love you. My first night here and I’m already being put to work.”

“Get used to it, Parson,” Ben told him, before picking up one of the suitcases and carrying it up to the guest room.

The guest room—the third of three more-or-less equally sized bedrooms, really—was a bittersweet room for Ben. While the master bedroom had been one of the first rooms, along with Sam’s, that he and Marian had made to their tastes, the guest room had languished. He was pretty sure that the pencil lines marking the growth of some previous owners’ child had still be on the door frame until a couple of years ago. It was the last house-related project that Marian had undertaken. After she got sick, but before she was too sick to do much at all.

Kent came up behind him with his other big suitcase. He rested his chin against Ben’s shoulder and looked where Ben was looking, which wasn’t at anything at all. “It’s nice,” he said. “Kit and I will be alright.”

There was a squashy wingback chair with dark gray tufted upholstery and some cheerful teal and white cushions next to the window. Under the window was a white bookshelf that was stuffed to overflowing, like all the other bookshelves throughout the house. The bed itself was covered with freshly laundered sheets with a gray and white geometric pattern. Even before it was properly decorated, Marian had insisted on putting a vase of flowers in the window for guests. Ben had thought about it, but decided against it because he figured Kit would just try to eat them. Instead, he’d left a chocolate on the pillow, half-jokingly.

Kent spotted it and picked it up. “You’re spoiling me, Wright.” He unwrapped it and popped it into his mouth. “Let’s see what advice Dove has for me today. Hmm. ‘Have a little naughty with your nice.’”

Ben burst into laughter. “Oh, that’s a good one for you. Alright, go unpack, Naughty and Nice. Dinner’s in an hour.” He kissed Kent on the cheek as he left the room. He didn’t think he was imagining the blush that rose on Kent’s face in response.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Kent was around _all the goddamn time._ He was there in the morning, wearing disreputable blue and white striped PJ bottoms and a faded Las Vegas Aces t-shirt with his number on the sleeve. “Did they think you’d forget who you were if they didn’t literally label you?” Ben asked, chewing a bite of his bagel and spreading a frankly disgusting amount of cream cheese on the one he’d just toasted for Sam.

“Probably,” Kent replied. “No college degree, remember?” He stuffed a piece of his own bagel in his mouth.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

He was there when Ben got home from a frustrating meeting with a stupid fucking client who refused to accept Ben’s suggestions about cutting a third of the book. Ben slammed the door shut behind him, dropped his bag in the middle of the hallway, and kicked off his shoes with extra force, satisfied that Sam wasn’t there to see him do all the things he told her not to do.

But then there was Kent. “You okay? Maybe a little early for a beer, but…”

Ben jerked his head up. “Fuck, I forgot you’d be here. I’m just in a shitty mood. Work.”

“Don’t I know that feeling,” Kent said as he steered Ben toward the kitchen. Ben grudgingly supposed that he did.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

He was there the next weekend as Ben stopped in the kitchen to drink a glass of water before heading outside. “What are you doing this morning?” Kent asked. Kent was sitting at the kitchen table in what had clearly become his chair, reading something on his tablet. An empty coffee cup in front of him gave tell to how long he’d been sitting there.

Ben gulped the water. “Yard work,” he replied after he swallowed.

Kent wrinkled his eyebrows and looked thoroughly taken aback. “Ben, it’s…”

“...October?” Ben finished. “Yep. The roses need pruned and winterized, and I’m planting tulip bulbs along the front sidewalk. And it’s forty degrees out, so today’s the day.”

Kent got up to pour himself another cup of coffee. “Better you than me.”

Ben kept himself from commenting about the yardwork that would come with Kent’s new house. He would have to decide what to do with the yard, keep the trees under control, keep the long driveway shoveled or plowed in the winter... the list would be a long one.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

“Kent, Dad refuses to help me with my English homework.”

“Sam, what makes you think I’m in any way qualified to help with English homework?” Kent said.

Ben rubbed at the bridge of his nose. “Dad is right here, and _Dad_ will not help you with your homework because you _need to read the book.”_

“What’s the book?” Kent asked.

Ben wanted to bang his head on the table. One was as bad as the other. He should’ve known that offering to let Kent stay with them was asking for trouble.

“Hamlet.” Sam’s voice was petulant. “I get that it’s _culture_ and _good literature_ and all that, but it’s so boring!”

“Alas, poor Yorick!” Kent said with his arm outstretched and hand cupping an imaginary skull.

Sam’s jaw practically dropped. “What, I had to read something in junior English so I could pass the class! So you have to read it too, young lady,” Kent said, letting his arm drop.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Ben admitted he was maybe going a little crazy when he literally bumped into Kent in the hallway. It was late on a Saturday night, Sam was at Anna’s, and Ben had maybe been thinking about Kent as he lay in bed. He’d decided to get a glass of water from the bathroom, and instead ended up jumping six inches off the ground as he collided with Kent.

They’d managed to go on another tame dinner date, but most of their time together was either with Sam, in passing, or talking about houses. And of course, this thrice-damned house only had one upstairs bathroom, and they were both up too late. He and Marian had talked on and off about a two-story addition—a screened-in porch downstairs, a master bath and maybe a tiny study or additional bathroom upstairs—but they’d known it was a pipe dream.

“Sorry, sorry,” Kent said, fumbling with his toothbrush.

Ben stilled Kent’s hands with his own. “You can leave your toothbrush in the bathroom, you know.” He didn’t pull his hands away.

Kent’s smile was small but real. “What, and not be given this chance to run into you in the hallway at…” He pretended to check the watch he wasn’t wearing. “Quarter after midnight? What’s an old man like you still doing up?”

Ben took a step closer to Kent. “Couldn’t sleep.” He made no effort to hide the downward skim of his eyes down over Kent’s pajamas, back up to his mouth.

Kent’s bare toes were nearly touching Ben’s. His hands, one still holding the toothbrush, had come to rest on Ben’s hips. Ben felt as though his body was awakening. “Couldn’t sleep, huh,” Kent said. “Maybe I should give you a kiss goodnight.”

Ben leaned forward almost without thinking about it, hands coming up to cup Kent’s face as gently as he knew how. They were kissing, and Kent was backing Ben up towards his bedroom door. Ben let out a noise that he would have been embarrassed about if he’d thought about it any further before pulling away. “Go put your toothbrush down,” he said. “Then get your ass in here.”

Ben gave himself permission to spend the next thirty seconds freaking out. He hadn’t slept with anyone besides Marian since he was twenty-two. He had barely thought about sex since she died; it was like his dick just wasn’t interested in any proceedings, and he’d been fine with that. But since he’d given himself permission to think about Kent, his sex drive had roared back with a vengeance. He’d spent more than one morning jerking off in the shower to thoughts of Kent’s mouth and hands and what they might do. But suddenly it was all very real.

When Kent flopped down on the bed next to him, Ben jumped. “Penny for them?” Kent said, one corner of his mouth crooking up in a dirty grin.

“How about if I just show you?” Ben said, brushing off any lingering strangeness. He wanted this. Kent wanted this.

“I can work with that,” Kent replied.

Ben grabbed the hem of Kent’s t-shirt and pulled it swiftly over his head before pushing at his shoulder until Kent complied and backed up to lay down in the middle of Ben’s bed. Ben paused, Kent’s shirt still in his hand, and just looked. It was a good sight; less strange than he’d feared to have someone else in his bed after so long. Smug smile on his face, Kent asked, “Like what you see?”

Ben chuckled. “You dick, you know I do.”

Kent’s grin grew even wider as he reached out to cup Ben through his boxers. “Yeah, I guess you do.” Ben leaned down to kiss the smile off Kent’s face, letting it get deeper and filthier than he’d yet dared. He let his hands map Kent’s chest by feel: the light-colored patch of hair between his nipples, how the scrape of a fingernail over a nipple made him gasp and twist, the spot just below his ribcage that made him jerk away involuntarily. Ben laughed into Kent’s mouth. “The great Kent Parson is ticklish, huh?” He reached out for the spot again and Kent rolled out of reach.

“Don’t even think about it, asshole, we have other things to do.” Ben carefully stored the knowledge away anyway, even as he slid his hands under the waistband of Kent’s pajama bottoms to palm his ass. Kent arched his hips up in response and Ben grinned as he felt Kent’s dick hard against his hip.

“I’m gonna blow you,” Ben said. He hadn’t exactly mapped out this encounter in his head, but he’d certainly thought about it enough. “Fair warning, I haven’t given a blowjob since approximately 2012, so.” He slipped his hands down Kent’s thighs, powerfully muscled and sparsely haired, pulling his pajamas with him. Kent’s dick sprang free. Tossing the pajamas aside, Ben took Kent in hand and ran his thumb over the head of his dick.

“It’s like riding a bicy–” Kent started to reply. Ben smirked and slid his mouth down where his hand had been a second earlier, effectively cutting off Kent’s unnecessary sass. Apart from some moans and breathy “Ben”s, Kent was gratifyingly less mouthy as Ben put all his effort into figuring out what did it for Kent.

Before long, Kent was tugging at Ben’s hair and gasping, “Ben, gonna– ah! Gonna come.” Ben reached up gracelessly and patted Kent’s side, sucking and swirling his tongue across the underside of Kent’s cock. Kent arched up off the bed and came, meaningless sounds tumbling from his lips. Ben swallowed as best he could and sat up, wiping the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. Kent’s eyes were closed and he looked boneless, utterly satiated, and Ben smiled.

“Gimme a min’,” Kent mumbled. “I got you, jus’ need a min’.” 

Ben’s smile softened even further, even as his own arousal, which he’d stubbornly ignored while focusing on Kent, became more insistent. It seemed fitting that Kent, with his quick response for nearly every situation, would be useless after an orgasm. Ben slid a hand down his stomach and gripped his cock, groaning low in his throat at the feeling of relief.

At that, Kent’s eyes opened, though he still looked a little soft and unfocused. “Starting without me?” His eyes drifted from Ben’s face downward to where Ben was slowly jerking himself.

“Yeah, but you haven’t missed much,” Ben replied. 

Kent sat up and kissed him, sliding a hand down to join Ben’s. Kent started off matching Ben’s slow pace, but eventually knocked Ben’s hand out of the way and picked it up a little. Ben’s arms came up to drape over Kent’s shoulders and his hips thrust upward in time with Kent’s strokes. Ben groaned into the juncture of Kent’s neck and shoulder, mouthing there, scraping with his teeth and soothing with his tongue. It seemed like no time at all before he was coming, his orgasm a slow, rolling wave that crested almost without warning.

He drew back just in time to see Kent run his finger through Ben’s come, striped across his chest, and lick it. Kent caught him watching. “I’ll blow you next time,” he promised.

“So there’s going to be a next time?” Ben asked, half-teasing but half-serious.

Kent backhanded his shoulder gently. “Of course, if you want there to be.” He stood up. “Just gonna clean up.”

Ben watched him walk, naked, across the bedroom and into the hall. A second later he was back, clean, with a warm washcloth that he ran across Ben’s stomach and thighs. “Thanks,” Ben said. “Hey, you don’t have to, but… you can stay here tonight if you want?” He hoped his voice didn’t betray the way that his heart was suddenly beating harder. He rolled over and got under the covers, making space for Kent if he wanted it.

Kent tossed the washcloth across the room in the direction of Ben’s closet and his laundry hamper. Ben thought about complaining, but instead just held up the edge of the blankets. Kent slid under them as if it was the easiest thing in the world. “Fair warning, I’m a cuddler,” he said, as he rolled towards Ben and looped one thigh across Ben’s. As he tucked himself more comfortably against Ben’s shoulder, Ben wrapped an arm around his shoulders and pulled him closer.

“Hey,” Kent said, not moving from where he’d settled. “I’m glad we did this. I know you’re probably feeling a lot right now, with Marian and Sam, and we don’t have to talk about it. I just wanted you to know.” Ben felt Kent press his lips to Ben’s collarbone.

“Thanks,” Ben said, letting out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “Now, sleep, old man.” It didn’t take long for Kent’s breathing to slow and even in sleep, and Ben wasn’t far behind him.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

Ben woke the next morning to the scent of coffee. When he opened his eyes, Kent was sitting next to him, propped up on pillows and scrolling through something on his phone. In his other hand was a steaming mug of sweet, milky coffee. “Morning, sleepy-head,” Kent said, setting down his phone and looking down at Ben. “Coffee for you on the nightstand.”

Ben yawned and turned his head, fumbling for his glasses. Steam rose from his favorite mug, the big Yellowstone National Park mug from a family vacation when Sam was eight. He sat up and kissed Kent, close-mouthed and chaste, conscious of his morning breath, before picking up the mug and breathing in the wonderful, rich scent. “Thank you,” he said, blowing on it before taking a sip. His eyes fell shut and he groaned happily. “What’s your plan for today?”

Kent had leaned over to rest his head on Ben’s shoulder. “Hmm. House stuff, probably. I should call my contractor and see how the kitchen’s coming. Wanna go see it?” Work had begun the previous week on Kent’s kitchen, and the bathrooms would be next. Ben felt like they’d been vacillating back and forth between brushed nickel and oil-rubbed bronze fixtures for years. He maintained that Kent only liked “oil-rubbed bronze” because it sounded dirty; brushed nickel wouldn’t look so dated so quickly.

“Yeah, okay,” he replied. “We can go once Sam gets home? The Christoffers are gonna drop her off around 11, 11:30, I think.”

Kent straightened up long enough to take a sip of coffee before dropping his head back to Ben’s shoulder. “Perfect,” he replied. “Now: I was thinking while the coffee was brewing… what finishes could faucets have in the 1890s?”

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Ben was prepared for the scene at Kent’s house; Kent was not. There was only so much that could be done in a week. The kitchen had been gutted—most of the awful ‘90s cabinetry was gone, the appliances had been sold, exposed wires hung from the ceiling, and one of the walls had been ripped back to its studs.

“It looks worse,” Kent said. “How does it look worse?”

Ben laughed. “Yeah, that’s how renovation goes. Things get way worse before they get better.”

Kent walked around, his gaze roaming from one surface to another as though he was trying to process it all. Ben couldn’t help but burst his bubble. “They haven’t ripped up the floor yet. That makes everything even worse.” After they’d pulled up a corner of the floor to find that the original hardwood was so water-damaged as to be unsalvageable, Kent had settled on gray flagstones. Kent groaned.

Just then, Kent’s contractor, Mike, walked in. “Kent, hi,” he said, offering his hand. Kent shook it, and then introduced Ben as “my voice of reason about all things home-renovation related.” Ben laughed and shook Mike’s hand. Mike was shorter than both of them, stockily built, wearing beat-up work boots and worn jeans with a fleece pullover. His hands were rough. Ben liked him immediately.

“Ben was telling me that it’s gonna get worse and then hopefully it will start to get better,” Kent said.

Mike guffawed. “Yeah, yeah, that’s about right.” He gestured at the few remaining cabinets. “These are gonna go next, then the floor. Then–” He led Kent around the kitchen, gesturing expansively, as Ben tuned him out. Kent looked happy and comfortable here, even in the midst of renovation chaos that he hadn’t been prepared for. Ben watched as Kent gesticulated at the area in front of the window, bereft now of the bad cabinetry and too-small stainless-steel sink, knowing Kent was imagining his butcher block counters and the deep farmhouse sink. Ben imagined Kent looking out the window as he washed up after breakfast, looking across his property, his home. He saw some other person coming up behind Kent, kissing him, wrapping their arms around him.

And something in Ben felt sorrowful, suddenly. This would be Kent’s home. Ben had known that. He _had,_ he chastised himself. He’d looked at countless ads for terrible, wrong houses. He’d been as sure as he could be that this particular house was the right house for Kent. He’d paged through brochure after brochure about fixtures and finishes, Googled photos of kitchens that looked like he thought Kent might want his to look.

He was complicit. And the meaning of that complicity was thrown into stark relief now, with Kent in the middle of the kitchen. It wasn’t the way he wanted it to be yet, but it would be soon.

Ben went outside, not saying a word to Kent or Mike as he left.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

Ben only startled out of his daze when Kent sat down heavily next to him on the back steps (cracked concrete, Ben had been thinking aimlessly; Kent could replace them with something much nicer). “What else did Mike have to say?” Ben asked, hoping they could somehow glide right over the fact that he’d abruptly left the room.

“Oh, we just talked about his cabinetry guy and how he’s found the perfect oak for the cabinets. The timeline, shit like that.” Ben knew he hadn’t escaped when Kent bumped his shoulder against Ben’s own. “What happened? You were there one second and gone the next.”

Ben rested his elbows on his knees and gazed out across the scrubby dead grass poking out of patches of melting snow, towards the treeline eighty feet away. “Just needed some air,” he replied. He knew even as it came out of his mouth that it wasn’t a good response, that he wouldn’t accept it if it was offered to him.

Sure enough, Kent pulled away. “Air, huh?”

“Fuck,” Ben said.

Kent leaned back in but didn’t say anything. Ben felt the silence expanding around them.

“I realized that this was going to be your home,” Ben said. It sounded dumb even to his own ears. “Like, you, standing in that window… I saw the finished kitchen and how you were going to live here and…” He trailed off, unsure of how to describe how he had felt when this realization hit, how it was even a realization in the first place.

“Ben,” Kent said, and his voice was so gentle that Ben almost wanted to cry. “Ben, I’m not just going to disappear or whatever, when the house is done.”

Ben pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to breathe, tried not to cry. “No, but… I have a home, and you have this home, and having you in the house the last few weeks…” He paused, wiped at his eyes, hoped Kent wouldn’t notice. He took a deep breath. “Anyway, I just can’t see—if we never…”

“Ben. This is a house. I like it, and someone needed to do something about the fucking awful kitchen. But it’s a house.” Kent wrapped his arm around Ben’s shoulder and pulled him in, rubbing his hand soothingly over Ben’s arm. Ben went willingly, resting his head on Kent’s shoulder. After a pause, Kent added, “We’re seeing where this is going. Most people don’t move in after one date, even if it is the spare room.”

Ben sat up and looked Kent dead in the eyes, trying to keep his tone in control at the flash of anger he felt. “We’re not ‘most people,’ Kent. ‘Most people’ aren’t a widower and an ex-NHL superstar with a daughter in common.” His voice was cutting and sharp.

Kent broke their eye contact almost immediately after Ben stopped speaking, and Ben felt a sudden flash of shame.

“Kent, I didn’t mean it that way.” Ben tried to backpedal, his anger gone as quickly as it had risen. “Can we—let’s just go home. It’s too chilly out to be out talking ourselves in circles.” He stood up from the cold concrete and held his hand out to Kent. Kent grabbed it, levered himself up, and, instead of letting go, threaded his fingers through Ben’s, squeezing his hand.

They walked back to Kent’s car like that. Ben was grateful for the contact. He just still wasn’t sure how they were going to solve this problem, this house-sized problem that he had somehow only just realized existed.

//\\\//\\\//\\\

The drive back was silent except for the radio, playing Queen as part of the station’s ‘70s flashback weekend. Kent drove, and when they passed the turnoff for Ben’s house, Ben said nothing. They ended up in front of Daily Grind, which made sense. “My treat,” Kent said, as he put the car in park and turned it off.

They ordered and by wordless agreement made their way with their drinks to one of the sofas in the farthest corner of the coffee shop. Ben held his cup of tea in both hands, as though the warmth of the Darjeeling could counteract the mess of feelings battling for dominance in his head.

The silence stretched between them like a thread, until finally Ben broke it. “I’m sorry,” he said. “That was shitty of me, and then I snapped at you, and I can’t even explain myself.” He couldn’t quite bring himself to look Kent in the eye.

“Ben,” Kent said, and Ben looked up at last. “If that was you snapping, we’re gonna be alright. I just thought maybe we should talk about it, and not at home.”

Ben gave a weak smile at that. “You know, you’re a perceptive bastard sometimes, Kent Parson.”

“I’m telling you, years of therapy.”

Ben took another sip of tea as he tried to gather his thoughts. “Home matters to me. We moved a lot when I was a kid, and so when Marian and decided we wanted to move in together, and we realized it was just as affordable for us to buy a house as to rent something, well. We—I—put down roots.” He paused. “We raised Sam there, we put a lot of work into the house together. I’m not ready to leave it.” There was still so much unspoken in those words: the _not even for you,_ the _not yet._ The still-omnipresent pain of his loss, the way the house made him feel like he still had some connection to Marian and to the life they’d built together.

Kent set his hand on Ben’s knee, squeezing. “I know how much your house means to you, Ben. I’m not–”

“It’s my connection to Marian,” Ben cut Kent off. His words were suddenly flowing. “I might be ready to leave it someday, maybe, but I still miss her every day. And maybe it’s irrational, but I just had a vision of–” His voice broke. “Of you and someone else in that kitchen, working on that house the way Marian and I worked on our house. That’s why I left, back there.”

Kent took the mug, now with only cold dregs remaining, from Ben’s hands and set it down on the low coffee table in front of them before he wrapped his arms around Ben. Ben felt some of the tension in his shoulders, some of his fear and worry, drain from him. One of Kent’s hands drifted slowly up and down his back in broad sweeps.

Finally, it was Kent’s turn to break the silence. “Ben. Ben, someone else working on the house with me? What do you think we’ve been doing for the last three months? Longer, if you count looking for the house in the first place.”

“Oh.” Ben felt simultaneously silly, for somehow not realizing, and relieved, that Kent had.

“Yeah, ‘oh,’” Kent replied. “Who knows how it all plays out, but, Ben, I want to be in this, with you. Renovating this house, a relationship, raising Sam, everything.”

Ben couldn’t help himself—he leaned in and kissed Kent gently, softly, hoping it expressed better than words how he felt. But just in case, he said it aloud: “Me too, Kent.”

\\\//\\\//\\\//

_Epilogue: Two Years Later_

The backyard was full of people. Ben wasn’t sure how they knew this many people, though more than a few of them were teammates from Kent’s NHL days. He was standing at the edge of the deck, gazing out over the gathering, thankful that upstate New York had pulled out a truly spectacular, blue-sky October afternoon.

Two days before, he and Kent had spent the afternoon stringing globe lights across the deck and setting up patio furniture. When a string of lights got hopelessly tangled, Kent had grumbled about how they should’ve hired someone to decorate. “You’re the one who wanted the reception in the backyard,” Ben had reminded him, laughing.

“Yeah, yeah, rub it in,” Kent replied, still fumbling with the lights. Ben had taken them from him and quickly untangled them. He pecked Kent on the cheek and continued hanging the lights. “That’s the man I’m marrying,” Kent said, appreciatively.

And now they were married. The ceremony had been small, with just their families and a few close friends in attendance, and short. But Kent had wanted a big party for the reception, and Ben had agreed. They were putting the Arts and Crafts house on the market next month, and it seemed only fair to give it a proper send-off and celebrate it for bringing them together.

Kent appeared at his elbow with a glass of wine that he held out to Ben. “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. “I’m good. How are you, oh husband mine?”

Kent’s lips crooked upward and his eyes sparkled. “I like the sound of that. I’m good, husband _mine._ Just glad everyone’s having a good time.”

“Is there enough food, do you think?” Ben asked. They’d decided to have a buffet, a mix of catered and home-cooked food thanks to various aunts and relatives and one Eric Bittle, who’d donated the dessert spread, including the wedding cake that they were going to cut in an hour or so.

Kent laughed. “Yeah, there’s plenty. I just came from the kitchen. Bitty’s in his element. I told him we had hired people so that he could be a guest and not do any more work than he already has, but he didn’t want to hear it.”

Getting to know Jack and Bitty had been one of the surprises of the past two years. Jack had retired from the NHL a few years before Kent and now worked for You Can Play on their NHL campaigns. Bitty owned a thriving bakery, and was on a mission to teach Sam how to bake a few things before she left for college. He insisted that it would immediately endear her to all her floormates.

Just then, Jack came up and clapped Kent on the back. “Congratulations, guys. This is a great reception. Is Bitty still in the kitchen?”

“Yeah,” Kent replied. “I was just telling Ben that I tried to get him to come out and join the party, but he seems to be happy in there keeping the catering staff in line.”

Jack rolled his eyes. “That’s Bitty for ya. Are you guys ready to list the house?”

//\\\//\\\//\\\

Once the kitchen was underway, Kent and Ben had found so many other projects to undertake with the house: replacing the psychedelic wallpaper, refinishing the floors, gutting and redoing all the bathrooms. They’d renovated the basement, making the wine cellar look like a place that a person could store bottles costing as much as Ben made in two weeks rather than someone’s weekend project abandoned halfway through Saturday morning. The last thing to be finished, since they’d spread it out over two summers, was the landscaping. Gone were the scraggly grass and cracked concrete, replaced with a new deck and flagstone patio. Large vegetable and flower beds, saplings that would grow into beautiful shade trees, and a small lawn had replaced them to much better effect.

Of course, by the time the flower beds were designed, built, and planted, Kent had proposed to Ben and they were making wedding plans.

“What do you want to do with your house?” Ben had asked over a dinner of chili a few weeks later. He was apprehensive about the response, though he was trying to be calm about it. Twisting the ring on his finger was definitely _not_ a sign of his nerves, thank you very much.

Kent crumbled a handful of tortilla chips over his bowl. “Sell it,” he replied, hardly glancing up. He’d technically moved out of Ben and Sam’s house once the kitchen renovation was finished, but it was clear even to a casual visitor that the Arts and Crafts house didn’t have anyone home on a regular basis.

Ben paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth. Kent finally looked up. “Sell it? Are you sure?” Ben asked.

“Yeah,” Kent replied, as though it was that easy. “It isn’t as though I live there full-time now, and I’m not asking you to move out of your home into my house. I basically live here already.”

“I guess you do,” Ben replied. “Well, then, we’ll sell it.” And that was that, just like that.

\\\//\\\//\\\//

The first dance was long over—nothing complicated, just a passable attempt at a waltz to Norah Jones singing “Come Away With Me”—and the cake, perfect as expected, was now mostly crumbs. Guests had departed, and the catering staff was finishing their cleanup.

“Ready to go home, Mr. Parson?” Kent asked, elbowing Ben teasingly in the side. Ben had shed his bowtie long ago, and the collar of Kent’s shirt was unbuttoned.

“Don’t even think about carrying me over the threshold, Mr. Wright,” Ben replied, laughing. “But, hey, I was thinking--”

“That’s dangerous,” Kent interrupted.

“No, no, let me finish!” Ben was glad Sam was spending the week at Anna’s. He and Kent weren’t taking a real honeymoon, but he wasn’t so tired from the wedding festivities that he was going to miss out on a chance to put his mouth all over Kent. “I was thinking, and I have some listings to show you tomorrow morning.” He honestly wasn’t sure if the butterflies in his stomach were excitement or nerves.

Kent’s eyebrows wrinkled in momentary puzzlement. “Listings?”

“Well, there’s no hurry, but I thought maybe we could buy a house for us. My house was mine and Marian’s, and Sam’s, but she’s off to college next year. I know you just renovated a house, and we’re selling it, but…” He trailed off.

Kent’s face had smoothed into a smile, his crow’s feet deepening. “A house for us, huh?”

“A home,” Ben said. “For all that’s to come.”

_finis_

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, I watched the BBC series Shetland, which I highly recommend. This fic is obviously not that at all (fewer murders, no wild Shetland beauty), but if you’ve seen the series, you may recognize the absentee-biological-father-gets-involved-in-teenage-daughter’s-life-after-mother’s-death scenario. Thanks to H for agreeing with me when I said that the scenario practically begged to be ficced.
> 
> The working title for this fic was: “Definitely not writing this fic, definitely not doing that (okay I appear to be writing it) (oh my god it's 25 pages long) (holy shit it's FORTY PAGES).” I genuinely still can’t believe I wrote a 20k fic. I hope you enjoyed it.


End file.
